WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES THE STORY OF HAxAN, THE WORLD'S STRANGEST FILM, AND THE MAN WHO MADE IT
First published by FAB Press, October 2006 FAB Press, 7 Farleigh, Ramsden Road, Godalming, GU7 lQE, England, U.K.
www.fabpress.com
Text copyright© 2006 Jack Stevenson. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
Edited and designed by Harvey Fenton, with thanks to Francis Brewster for production assistance.
This Volume copyright© FAB Press 2006 World Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-903254-42-6
Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Maren Pust, former editor of the Danish film journal,
Kosmorama, for various forms of assistance, and would also like to thank the late Anton LaVey for initially stirring his curiosity about Hiixan. LaVey's insights, imparted during late
night visits to his black house in San Francisco in 1991 and 1992, were invaluable.
The publisher would like to thank Gavin Baddeley, Lucas Balbo and Nigel Wingrove for supplying some of the rare illustrations reproduced in this publication. illustrations
are copyright © their respective owners, and are reproduced here in the spirit of publicity.
Front cover illustration A demon surveys the attributes of a young lovely who has given herself to the cause.
Frontispiece illustration Witches confessed that at night they transformed into animals
and soiled the holy altars of churches. Title pa9:e Illustration
Pen and ink sketch of Benjamin Christensen from 1945.
Jhe cltory oj'1-iaxa:tt, the �rla'.r cltranse.$t rilm, ana the :Jfl'an tiJY'ho :Jfl'acre :It
<tonttttt�
Introduction . . .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Ch. 1- The Early Years . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . 7
Ch. 2- The Mysterious X . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 14
Ch. 3 -Blind Justice . . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 19
Ch. 4 - The Making of The Witch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Ch. 5 ..:... Public Reaction to The Witch . . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 4 7
Ch. 6 -The German and American Films . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Ch. 7- The Invisible Ye·ars .......... : .................................... 84
Ch. 8 -The D.anish Comeback 9nd The Witch Revived . . . . . 93
Ch. 9 -Journey Into Twilight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Ch. 10 - The Witch Lives! . . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. . 111
Footnotes . . .. . .. .. . . . .. . . . . . .. .. .. .. . . .. . . .. .. .. . .. .. .. . .. . .. . . .. . . . . . .. . . .. . .. 119
Append:ix 1- Benjamin Christensem Filmography . . . . . . . . . . 122
.Append:ix 2- The Witch Cast and Crew Credits . . . . . . . . . . ; .... 125
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 . '-;
�nt�ubuctiun
\n. enjamin Christensen's macabre masterpiece from 1922, � Hiixan (The Witch) , can justifiably be called many things.
It can be considered the first cult movie, a genuine 'film
maudit' (literally a 'cursed film'), the first true feature-length
documentary (along with Nanook of the North, which was
made the same year), and so forth.
Many of these same things can or could have been said
about Tod Browning's much better known (and very different)
film, Freaks , made a decade later. Indeed, these two taboo
shattering works occupy an exclusive niche in the annals of
horror cinema and share uncanny similarities. Both were
greeted by angry protests upon release, and were widely
censored and fiercely condemned. Both were originally
disasters for the studios that backed them, monster movies
that weren't monster movies. To 'decent folks' these were the
two most morbid, perverse· films ever made, while to
advocates they shone with a very human vision. To the men
who made them they were the consuming obsessions in their
lives, the films they were put on earth to make, labours of love
that according to the lore destroyed their careers, and turned
two gregarious, extroverted young men into embittered
hermits and haunted them to their graves.
'The lore' of course always tends to the melodramatic, but
these two supremely gifted but troubled directors - one·
American, one Danish - did share a common fate ... Both were
tall, dashing, talented and 'difficult,' and both held a
fascination for the dark side of life. Both were employed at
MOM studios in depression-era Hollywood where they each
made films with Lon Chaney and solidified reputations as
masters of horror . . . but they never met.
Browning didn't completely follow the script. He made
more films after Freaks. some well received, before retreating
from public life to live in solitude.
Ditto Christensen , although much less is known about
him . Only one slim book has previously been written about
the man. thus far still available only in Danish . What
additional information that does exist on him tends to be
filtered through the narrow prism of academic interpretation
and the man himself rarely makes an appearance .
The goal of this book is to place Hiixan in the context of
Christensen's wider career. since the film did certainly
overshadow most of his professional life , and to place it within
the context of the times. This has required extensive research
into the Danish source material. and it was necessary to
translate much of the initial reaction in order to present a
picture of things at the 'moment of impact. · Many of the
issues that embroiled his film upon release are stil l ,
amazingly, being hotly debated today.
Who was this man who could make
such a film. and what drove him? We
still don't know for sure. Christensen,
the consummate 'man of mystery , '
wouldn't have had i t any other way.
Mystery man. Beryamin Christensen.
�ronically, the man who was to create the most perverse
ruand profane work of early cinema was born in the shadow
of a crucifix - a massive crucifix-shaped cathedral that
dominated the ancient city of Viborg, which during Medieval'
times was Christendom's stronghold in the Western Danish
provinces of Jutland.
He came into the world on 28 September, 1879 , dubbed
Benjamin Christensen, the youngest of twelve children. And
although he was to achieve much during his life , this was no
rags to riches story, his father ranking as one of the town's
most prosperous merchants and one of its most well-to -do and
influential citizens . As befitted his family's status , young
Benjamin attended the Cathedral School, the town's finest,
where he was versed in classical languages . But the boy had
an independent streak and after graduating from school he
travelled to Copenhagen to study medicine .
A funny thing happened on the way to a medical career -
he started singing. One morning while shaving over his sink,
the renowned opera singer, Nyrop, overheard him and stuck
his head round the door- 'Who on earth is that?!' He convinced
young Christensen to give the opera a go and the lad entered
into some months of preparatory voice training. In 1 9 0 1 he and
forty other hopefuls applied for admission to the prestigious
Royal Theatre's opera school and he was the only one to be
accepted . I He had his debut on 2 May, 1902 , playing the naive young
peasant, Mazetto , in Mozart's Don Juan, but disaster struck that
very night when a lump formed in his throat during the
7
performance and his voice grew
weaker as the evening wore on. He
was told by doctors that his throat
was okay but that he had an
untreatable nervous condition. He
had the support of major figures in
the Danish opera world; he had
been tipped to take over the
repertoire of the highly respected
Helge Nissen, and was to have sung
Mephisto's part in Gounod's Faust,2
a 'dream role' as he himself charac
terized it. And now an illusive illness
that was maddeningly untreatable
had ruined it all. In one stroke the
great future that had been predicted
for him was dashed.
above: Christensen as Mazetto
in 'Don Juan' in 1902.
left: Young Christensen (right) as an actor at Arhus Theatre.
Forced to quit the opera, he entered acting school . Mter
graduating he was engaged to perform for three seasons at a
new theatre in Arhus . There he played a Wide range of
characters and roles , performing With some of the best
Danish thespiru1.s of the day including B etty Nansen and
Bodil Ipsen. It was also here that he did his first directing,
but reportedly relations b etween Christensen and at least
some of his colleagues were strained, With one scrib e later
maintaining that he got such good reViews that his fellow
actors felt cheated of recognition, and accused him of unduly
influencing the writers .s
Christensen was a loner who always followed his own
path, and now that path led back to Copenhagen. There he
managed to get parts in several plays but once again his voice
began to betray him. While playing the role of the genie in
Aladdin, the audience was compelled to yell 'louder, louder ! '
throughout the evening. In 1 9 07 h e was forced t o retired from
the stage forever.
His great baritone singing voice would return on occasion
over the years , but never when he needed it and never when
he was confronted by a live audience . According to his own
account, years later he even ran into the great Enrico Caruso ,
who overheard him singing in his bathtub in his hotel room
in New York and asked Christensen to j oin him on stage . The
Dane tried to explain that his voice would falter the second
the curtain went up . Caruso was incredulous that anybody
could turn down such an offer and walked away shaking his
head in disbelief.4
Some difficult years followed his departure from the acting
profession. He had married the actress Ellen Arctander in
1904, and now they had two little boys so he was forced to
hustle to support his family. He worked as a proof-reader for a
daily paper and exported potatoes to Germany before finding a
better paid job selling high quality champagne for the French
company, Lanson Pere et Fils . As their agent in Copenhagen he
was obliged to frequent all the high-class drinking establish
ments , which he did without complaint. One writer would later
describe him as "living a mysterious double life" at this point.s
In fact he became something of a post-Victorian party animal ,
gadding about like royalty on the company's generous expense
account and freely imbibing of the liquid goods himself. 6
One day it all became too much for him. Ever fond of
dramatic gestures , he ceremoniously drew up a document that
stated that if he didn't abstain from alcohol as of that date then
he was an irresponsible father to his young sons . Thereafter he
pulled one of the little boys up onto his knee and, guiding his
little hand, had him sign the document, which he then signed
himself.7 And according to him, he honoured it. That might
have been a matter of degree, however, since he remained an
agent of Lanson Pere et Fils after his film career began - loathe to give up a significant income - so bottles of bubbly were
always on hand at his social gatherings and offered to actors
on occasion as pick-me-ups when their energy flagged. And in
many of his films there was the obligatory Champagne
drinking scene in what must have been one of the first
examples of 'product placement. '
According t o the lore handed down over the years ,
Christensen's decision to go into film was prompted by a
disturbing scene he witnessed one day when he left his house;
there on the far side of the street was the famous actress , Asta
Nielsen, being led away by police officers . Nielsen had studied
privately with one of his acting teachers and they were friends ,
so he was understandably distraught and rushed over to help
- only to discover that this was a film shoot (actually the
10
closing scene of her 1 9 1 0 film, The Abyss.) (The story has since
been discounted by some writers as 'too good to be true,' but
in fact he did live directly across from where that scene was
filmed.) He claims he was bitten by the 'film-bug' then and
there, his eyes opened to the dramatic potential of a medium
he had not preViously held in particularly high esteem. That
very night he launched into his first script.
When in 1 9 1 2 he finally began to work in film as an actor
he was no star-struck youngster. He was by now 33 years old
with plenty of experience in both theatre and opera, and he had
lots of friends and connections in the fledgling film industry.
And he had life experience - he had been a salesman, a
businessman, a family man, and he had known lean years. He
was an artist but also a pragmatist. Film was perfect: with no
live audience- and no sound- he wouldn't have to worry about
his voice failing him.
There is some uncertainty as to how many films he acted
in between 1 9 1 2 and 1 9 1 5. Some sources mention as many as
five,8 (see the filmography for a full accounting of Christensen's
work during this period). In any case his first film was The Belt
of Fate. It was made for Carl Rosenbaum who had had success
with a picture-called The Four Devils in 1 9 1 2 and who now had
his own studio thanks to a group of German investors who
hoped he would continue his money spinning ways. He had
made Christensen's acquaintance beforehand and hired him to
play the lead, that of a blind musician with an unfaithful wife.
ln the film he presents her with a cursed article of apparel, a
belt that will cause any adulterer who dons it to die. Mter
giving her the belt, he commits suicide. She later puts the belt
on ... and dies, the curse haVing come true.
The film is now lost, but is believed to have been directed
by Svend Rindom, who had been an acting colleague of
11
Christensen'sjirstjilm role as the blind musician (right) in The Belt of Fate.
Christensen's in his days at Arhus Theatre and had helped
Rosenbaum write the script to The Four Devils. Christensen
was reportedly dissatisfied with the quality of the production
and in 1913 signed with another company, Dania Biofilm . For
them he acted in Little Claus and Big Claus, playing a doctor.
That same year he saw Albert Capellani's movie , Les
miserables , which was screened for the benefit of
Copenhagen's actors in the magnificent Palads (Palace )
Theatre . The screening made a deep impression on the whole
audience , not least Christensen who remembered it as a
decisive turning point for him . Everything that film was
capable of was here suddenly demonstrated . The experience
must have increased his impatience with the humble
productions he himself was at that point involved in .
1:1.
A pen and ink drawing of the Palads Theatre, circa 1912.
In March 1913 a group of Danish investors from Arhus
bought out the Germans and took over Rosenbaum's company
(The Dansk Biograf Kompagni) . They quickly grew dissatisfied
with Rosenbaum's performance; he had spent a lot of money
and only made the one movie , The Belt of Fate. In the meantime
Christensen continued to try to sell the script he'd written the
night he saw Asta Nielsen's performance out in the street . After
reportedly offering it to August Blom for 20,000 kroner cash,
he presented it to the Dansk Biograf Kompagni . Both
Rosenbaum and the board were impressed by it , and he
assumed operational control of the studio to make it.
That script would become The Mysterious X.
14t'hristensen directed The Mysterious X in Taffelbays Alle, �in Hellerup , a well-to -do town just north of Copenhagen.
(Hellerup had plenty of luxurious villas that made ideal
shooting locations and many of the early Danish silent
movies were filmed there . ) He was a kind of one man b and
on this film, writing, directing and also playing the lead
character, the gallant Navy Lieutenant, van Rauen, who is
entrusted with a set of secret orders . Enter one Count
Spinelli , a treacherous cad who attempts to seduce his
beautiful wife (she beats off his advances) and steal the
orders . Spinelli finds them while prowling the house , fleeing
when van Rauen arrives and spots him . Our hero is
uncertain what his wife's involvement with the villain is , and
when put on trial for treason - the seal on the orders having
been broken - he refuses to divulge what he knows for fear of
compromising her honour, and is sentenced to death. His
wife , in turn, thus far puzzled by his behaviour, has a dream
that makes everything clear to her, prompting her to alert the
proper authorities . A messenger's last minute dash on
horseback manages to save an innocent man's life .
It was hailed as the best Danish film of 1 9 1 3 , no small
accomplishment considering the global success that Danish
films were then enjoying on the world market.9 But it was
more than that according to modern day historians , among
them Denmark's leading Christensen scholar John Ernst. He
states that The Mysterious X and August Blom's Atlantis of the
same year were the two most modern works of world cinema
prior to Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.
Heady praise indeed, but deserved. At a time when so
many films were based on novels , Christensen had filmed an
original story and dispensed with the literary cliches that
informed so much of the competition. He had shown an ability
to transform psychology into physical action, and his interplay
between light and shadow was innovative and dynamic. He
also departed from conventional film style by letting inanimate
objects play parts , so to speak. In this film a trap door closes·
and becomes tightly wedged, imprisoning the villain who
struggles desperately to open it. In other films a door is opened
by the wind and a lamp is borne through the darkness by a
man who cannot initially be seen. Christensen had been deeply
moved in The Four Devils by the simple sight of an empty
trapeze swinging back and forth in the circus tent, after the
acrobat who was to grab it missed and had fallen to the
ground. To him it was the most affecting part of the whole film.
The Mysterious X evidenced an attention to detail that
would become Christensen's trademark. Every little nuance
had been thought out to an unprecedented degree, with some
of the scenes having been re-shot eight or nine times . This also
made for a film that took an unusually long time to shoot (three
months instead of the typical two weeks) and was expensive
more Christensen trademarks .
This was due , to some extent, to his desire to experiment.
In later years he would claim that The Mysterious X contained
the first scene of anyone turning a light on in a room, a
challenging 'special effect' in those days when movies were
shot outdoors or in glass-walled studios where the sun was
the main source of light. He had twelve men lay on the roof
of the glass-panelled studio which they had covered with a
tarp. Actress Karen Sandb erg came into the dark room and
put her hand on the light switch. The camera stopped while
she froze in that position and the tarp was pulled off by the
workers . The camera was started again and presto - a light
had been turned on!
Perhaps this 'trick' had been done before, but so what? He
had done it well (reportedly impressing American critics) and
perhaps more importantly it was a good story and he was ,
above all else , a good story-teller. In Denmark, where the
picture was promoted as a "sensational Danish drama, " the
critics were likewise impressed. One writer praised him for
packing in enough "beautiful landscapes , burning Windmills ,
ravenous rats , condemned men, dreadnoughts and subter
ranean dungeons" to fill five or six normal f:llrns.1o
The Mysterious X was released first in America in 1 00
prints , its premiere held during March 1 9 14 in a large New
York theater. It went on to earn accolades in the American trade press , which was not usually receptive to 'stagy'
European films . It was championed by advocates of the young
medium such as one Stephen Bush, who wrote in that month's
edition of The Moving Picture World: "This feature is nothing
less than a revelation in dramatic motion pictures . It sets a
new standard of quality. It emphasizes as no other film
production the absolute superiority of the screen over the stage
and opens up a vista of coming triumphs . . . An extraordinary
boldness of invention joined with a mastery of detail that
approaches genius helps to make this feature rise above all
which has been filmed before . " 11
The American buyer had also acted with 'extraordinary
boldness' by shoVing 400 , 000 dollars of the film's 600 , 000 U . S .
gross straight into his own pocket, an d leaVing none for
Christensen, according to an article in the Danish press .12 For
a film made for just 30 ,000 kroner this was in any case
amazing box office .
16
Christens en hims elf travelled to New York and
throughout Europe to sell the film. These 'sales trips ' were
adventures in and of thems elves . "I s at next to people in
black leather boots in Moscow and with cigar -puffing theater
owners in New York. " In Europe the film itself was suspect;
as the Great War loomed, spy films had b een outlawed in
Germany and the Austro-Hungarian territories , and were
considered unnecessary incitements in other countries .
While in B erlin in 1 9 1 4 a fateful event occurred - he
stumbled upon a copy of a book called Malleus Malejicarum
der Hexenhammer (The Witch Hammer) , a guide for witch
hunters written in 1 487 by the two infamous inquisitors ,
James Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, who were also
Dominican monks . Called 'one of the most blood-soaked
works in human history, ' it was widely read for much of the
250 years the Inquisition lasted, its popularity exceeded only
by the Bible . It is renowned today as the most infamous of
the witch-hunting manuals which over the course of roughly
three centuries helped to send as many as nine million (eight
million is often cited) victims , primarily women, to their
deaths , often on bonfires . (This figure is contested today by
historians who claim it was a gross exaggeration and that
the actual toll was b etween forty and fifty thousand. )
Christensen himself found it t o b e "one of the most
perfidious documents ever published , "I3 but he was als o
completely fascinated b y it . O n that s ame trip h e passed
through Paris where he found a copy of La sorcU�re by Jules
Michelet, a study of witchcraft and the phenomenon of the
persecutions . "After reading these two b ooks , " he would later
note , "I was seized by the intensely dramatic p ower of the
material14 . . . it was clear to me that I had finally found a
subject. " 15
17
He irilmersed himself in this dark history and began to
collect all the books about the subject that he could find. At
about the same time he was made aware of the lectures of the
world famous neurologist, Professor Charcot. Charcot claimed
that the symptoms (of hysteria) he found in his patients were
the same that caused 'witches' to act as they did when they
were 'possessed, ' and, more controversially, that the female
Saints also suffered from this same form of hysteria.
All this research laid the groundwork for the film that would come to dominate his career and his life , The Witch ,I6
but that was still years down the road and at that moment
humankind was being sucked into another kind of mass
hysteria of even more destructive proportions - The First
World War.
The War had an effect on every aspect of life in Europe ,
including the financirig and exportation of motion pictures ,
and Christensen was compelled to abandon his next film
project, The Man Without a Face (Manden uden ansigt) ,
despite the fact that Nicolai Neiiendam had been chosen for
the lead and shooting had already begun.
•?Blinb iJu�ticet
MY August 1 9 1 5 Christensen had managed to acquire a � controlling interest in the Dansk Biograf Kompagni. The members of the board stayed on but it became 'Benjamin Christensen Film' and was run from his home. His financiru backers were, according to one report, a bunch of rich people from Arhus who were involved With it almost 'for sport.'I7
Now he was certain to again have total creative freedom on his next film, Blind Justice. Shooting on that picture started in the fall in the same studio in Taffelbays Aile where he'd shot The Mysterious X. This time around the very capable Johan Ankerstjerne would be rn.anning the camera.
Christensen would again play the lead. While his previous performance had been marked by bouts of frenetic overacting, here he would comport himself With more subtlety as 'Strong Henry,'IB a slow-Witted circus strongman who has been wrongfully imprisoned. One day he escapes from jail, gathers up his infant son and makes a dash for freedom, but a sudden storm forces him to seek shelter in a nearby mansion. There he encounters Eva, who is at first terrified but then agrees to help him for the sake of the child. Her father senses something is wrong and forces her to tell all. The cops are called and they drag Strong Henry back off to prison as he vows revenge. The child is placed in an orphanage. Eva eventually marries and convinces her husband that they should adopt the lad.
Fourteen years later Henry is released from prison, a broken man. He enters a toy shop to purchase a gift for his son but can't even remember how old the boy would be. When he arrives at the orphanage he is shocked to learn that his son
'Gii'a;pter d/iree
Christensen as a young 'Strong Henry' in Blind Justice.
was put up for adoption long ago and
that his whereabouts are unknown .
He stumbles dejectedly about town
until he bumps into an old crony
from prison who invites him to j oin
his gang of small-time crooks .
During the course of one of their
capers they manage to pilfer the keys
to a townhouse . While ransacking
the premises , which unbeknownst to
Strong Henry is owed by Eva and her
husband , they find the address of
their villa in the suburb s . She had
always lived in dread that one day he
would come to extract his revenge ,
and now her fears come true.
Eva's husband is lured to the
gang's hideout where he is overpowered and tied up in a chair.
Yet in his haste he had forgotten his keys when he departed the
villa and now the son shows up with them in hand . Henry,
oblivious to the fact that the lad is really his own son, locks
him into a cupboard and sets off for the villa. Meanwhile the
captives manage to free themselves and alert the police . Just
as Henry takes aim at Eva through a series of keyholes the
cops arrive and open fire . Henry is mortally wounded, but on
his deathbed is absolved of his original crime when the real
murderer makes a timely confession . Now cleared of all
charges and reunited with his son , he dies in peace.
As John Ernst writes , "Audiences at the time were just as
enthusiastic about Blind Justice as they had been about The
Mysterious X. That we must today rate Blind Justice as a lesser
work owes first and foremost to its melodramatic , sentimental
t/i(·
story and its pseudo-realistic nature ,
which quite u nderstandably was
construed as realism. This pseudo
realism also characterizes The
Mysterious X but is less of a
drawback here since that was an
unrealistic spy story to start with,
one that took place in 'no man's
land' . . . The Mysterious X is a far
more pioneering achievement . "l9
While another great master of
early Danish cinema, Carl Dreyer,
believed that films should be based
on literature and that the director
should be true to that source
material . Christensen believed that
scripts should be the result of
Christensen as the aged 'Strong Henry' in
Blind Justice.
original ideas and that the finished work should bear the mark
of the creator's personality. The two above-mentioned films
very much did , not least because Christensen wrote , directed
and played the leads in both. His own face even dominated the
key promotional art of The Mysterious X, staring sternly ahead
in three different guises while captions trumpeted: "written by
Benjamin Christensen . . . Directed by Benj amin Christensen . . .
In the lead role , Benjamin Christensen . " A promo blurb went
on to declare: "Benjamin Christensen's new film is absolutely
the very best film and absolutely the very best premiere- quality
picture ever staged in Denmark. "
This was sweet vindication. Christensen had previously
seen a brilliant career in the opera slip through his fingers
because he could not control his greatest gift - his voice - even
though there was , physically speaking, nothing wrong with him .
.1./
Now he had found a new medium of expression where he could
control almost everything down to the smallest detail, and
that's what he aimed to do . It was a world of his own making,
a world he could create and control.
He carefully sculpted the physical as well as the emotional
frames. In Blind Justice, for example, he had the set designer
build a scale model of the villa which can be seen in the
prologue. He stands over it with actress Karen Sandberg, ·
discussing the plot and casting a dominating shadow over the
proceedings . Scholarly writing on the film tends to interpret
this as a testament to his great care and attention to detail ,
and he did indeed possess these qualities in spades ; in his zeal
he reportedly put his actors through the tortures of the
damned. For example , he compelled Karen Sandberg "to spend
many hours staring at that dollhouse (of the villa) to get a
feeling for the setting of the film , to learn where certain rooms
were situated in relation to others . "20 Hermann Spiro , who
played the evil Count Spinelli in The Mysterious X underwent a
somewhat more challenging ordeal as Christensen contem
plated the best way to depict a swarm of rats attacking and
devouring him in a sewer tunnel. Notes a writer at the time: "At
first he smeared the actor's face with honey and set a whole
basket of the vermin after him , and when that didn't work he
made a dummy with Spiro's face carved in cheese and the rats
went amok on it. "21 On Blind Justice he did an unheard of ten
takes of every scene to capture exactly the effect he wanted,
drawing out filming and post-production to a whopping eight
months and making it the most expensive Danish film at that
time after Atlantis.
Christensen was indeed a painstaking craftsman, but
there was certainly more to it than that. To consider him
primarily as an artist rather than a person - a person who had
suffered a great trauma when his voice betrayed him, and who
perhaps not unexpectedly now became something of a 'control
freak,' to use the modern expression - is to miss the real story
of Benjamin Christensen. The man himself, as noted, was an
extraordinary storyteller and would have never forgiven writers
for ignoring that. God knows he left enough clues strewn in his
wake. In any case, the success of Blind Justice was another
career boost. He was now a maker of films that had social
relevance and were also exciting and original. And sensational . He always thought that fllms should be 'sensational. '
In New York film censorship authorities invited him to
show the picture for an invited audience of VIPs from the
cultural world. Among them was the warden of Sing Sing
prison, Thomas Mott Osborne, a humanitarian dedicated to
improving the lives of convicts . He had even spent several
weeks inside the institution disguised as a common prisoner so
as to get to know the true nature of the place. He now invited
Christensen to show Blind Justice for the inmates in a huge
hall with a capacity of about 2 ,000 . The screening made quite
an impression on Christensen, not least because during the
show there was a stabbing. The guilty party was immediately
hustled out by two other prisoners acting in accord with the
'honour system' that Osborne had instituted, whereupon
inmates policed themselves - all of this according to the
account Christensen later gave in 1 945 when he published a
compendium of short stories entitled Hollywood Destinies.22
As Ernst relates , "The prisoners were as keenly impressed
with the film as Christensen was with their intelligence and
sensitivity, and with the (in any case at that time) advanced
conditions at the place . " He never forgot his visit to Sing Sing
and would later claim that it inspired him to embark upon a
study of the nature of evil . And for their part the prisoners
never forgot Blind Justice. During his Hollywood period in the
late Twenties he was still being approached by ex-cons who
had seen the film at that screening and wanted to express
their gratitude.
America imported relatively few films during the First
World War, but The Mysterious X had been popular and
Christensen managed to sell the new picture to Vitagraph,
which released it in forty prints . The premiere took place in
New York's 3, 500-seat Strand theater to the accompaniment of
a fifty-piece orchestra. The crowd was silent during the show
and that made Christensen nervous , but when the curtain
came down there was hearty applause . It had been a rousing
success . He was immediately approached by interested distrib
utors , and that night also got to meet Mary Pickford.
At some point in the process he commented to Vitagraph
executive, Albert Smith, that he intended to make a trilogy
about superstition down through the ages , and that this work
would constitute a radical break from the conventions of the
medium. It would be entitled "The History of Superstition. " The
first part was to be called Heksen (The Witch) , to be followed by
Helgeninde (The Woman Saint) and Ander (Spirits ) . "I don't
think that's anything American audiences would cotton to , "
Smith dryly remarked.23
While Vitagraph wasn't at all interested in his superstition
trilogy, they did offer him another job - that of supervising all
their productions . It was a tempting offer that was hard to turn
down, but in the end he did. His head was full of his next illm, The Witch, and there wasn't room for anything else .
And so he came back to Denmark to make it.
�hristensen began to research The Witch in earnest.
�Subsequent exaggerated utterances in the press inferred
that he had acquired a whole library of rare books on the
subject, when in fact all his books could fit into a single
streamer trunk (later stolen in America) , but it was
nevertheless an impressive collection.
Ayear-and-a-half later he ran out of money and was forced
to sell much of his beloved antique furniture in order to
continu�. "I remember," he later recalled, "the sight of my two
sons standing in the doorway with tea,.rs in their eyes as the
furniture was being carried away. "24 One might also speculate
as to the effect this morbid obsession had on his marriage,
inasmuch as he and his wife, Ellen Arctander, were divorced
the following year, in 1 920 . It took Christensen two-and-a-half
years just to undertake the research on this film.
He had doubted that any producer in Denmark would be
"crazy enough" to gamble his money on a film that was this far
out and unconventional, and he was right - but a producer in
Sweden was willing to take up the challenge , a man named
Charles Magnusson, and in February 1 9 1 9 Christensen inked
a contract with Svensk Filmindustri. Since it was now being
made with Swedish money it would go down in history as a
Swedish film:, with the Swedish spelling of the title, Hiixan, the
official one, and it would have its world premiere in Stockholm,
but in all other respects it was thoroughly Danish.
Magnusson was a visionary producer who was largely
responsible for the excellence of Swedish silent cinema, having
given talented directors like Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller
creative freedom, and now he afforded Christensen that same
luxury. For that 'B enne,' as friends called hlln, would remain
ever grateful. But there was a vast amount of work to be done
before even a single frame of film could be exposed.
First they needed a studio to shoot the movie in since there
were none available in Sweden. Benne persuaded Magnusson
to buy hlln back his old studio in Taffelbays Aile. He had sold
it in 1 9 1 7 to another company and it was again up for sale,
albeit in terrible condition. There were no working toilets or
bathrooms, and what technical apparatus remained was
antiquated. Svensk Filmindustri had to purchase new
cameras, lighting equipment, etc. The actual cost of shooting
was reckoned at between 300 , 000 and 400 ,000 kroner, but all
this added expense ballooned the budget up to somewhere
between 1 . 5 to 2 million kroner, a whopping sum that earned
it the dubious distinction of being the most expensive silent
movie ever made in Scandinavia.
Filming began in late winter of 1 9 2 1 and lasted throughout
the hot summer months and into October, most of it done in
Taffelbays Aile, but with a few scenes shot at two other nearby
studios .
Christensen had cameraman Johan Ankerstjerne back for
another turn. A barrel maker's son from Randers whose first
brush with the working world was as a watch maker's
apprentice, Ankerstjerne's life was changed the day he was
given a movie camera to fool around with. He aimed it at what
drama and pageantry there was to be found in the small
Jutland city, various parades and municipal events and
whatnot. He went on to become a skilled cinematographer and
was already exceedingly accomplished in the trade when in
1 9 1 1 , at 25 years of age, he was brought to Copenhagen by Ole
Olsen's Nordisk Film Company. These were exciting times for
2.6
the Danish film industry as actors like Valdemar Psilander and
Asta Nielsen were achieving global fame and production was
booming. That year he shot no less than 27 films for Nordisk
that went out onto the world market, and he stayed with the
company until 1 9 1 5 , later serving another stint with them from
1924 to 1 932. Mter that he founded a film laboratory and
print-making plant that still exists and is one of the biggest in Denmark.
Not all of Ankerstjerne's work on The Witch confined him to the studio . At one point he travelled to the town of Silkeborg
with his equipment to shoot background footage devoid of
telephone wires , modern rooftops and other tell-tale traces of
the 20-t:p. Century. This area in Jutland, which is also one of
Denmark's most rugged, was ideally suited for this task. He
also shot footage at nearby Himmelbjerget, Denmark's highest
mountain - modest as it is - for what would prove to be the
most spec�acular scene in the film, the flight of the witches to
Bloksbjerg ('Brocken' in English subtitles ) , the medieval town
in northern Germany where according to legend all witches
gather on the summer solstice to indulge in profanities with
the Devil.25 Christensen also sent cameramen to remote parts
of Norway and Sweden to shoot roll after roll of clouds and
mountaintops . They shot a vast amount of footage , much of it
in fact unusable for one reason or another.
One can infer from comments published over the decades
that Christensen, being an obsessive , a perfectionist and
perhaps even a genius , was not always easy to get along with,
but he did have an excellent relationship with his cameraman and was thrilled with his work. Ankerstjerne's photography
and effects surpassed what the Hollywood studios were
capable of, even with all the state-of-the-art equipment they
had at their disposal .
:q
above: Various Satanic posturings take place in the Devil's lair in Bloks/:>jerg.
opposite: The }light of the witches to Bloksbjerg.
Richard Louw, the props and sets man , was equally
indispensable . The medieval torture instruments he created
were works of art . And he even found time to construct a scale
model version of a Middle Ages town complete with 250 miniature dwellings . The village was mounted on a large
carousel twenty metres in diameter and filmed from the edges
as twenty men turned it .
The aforementioned flight to Bloksbjerg, which prompted
spontaneous applause at many shows and still manages to
amaze, was an equally painstaking
and time consuming scene to
construct. The scores of women26
who acted as airborne witches were
filmed separately on elevated and
unseen seats with broomsticks
placed between their legs while wind
was blown at them by an airplane
engine adapted for the purpose . This
in combination with the camera
tracking past them provided the
illusion of motion, of flight . (It was
originally intended that trees and
landscapes shot from a fast moving
train could add to the sense of rapid
movement but this footage proved
unusable . ) The actresses were filmed
from various distances and angles
and with different camera
movements . Then, via the multiple
exposure process, all the flying
witches were assembled onto five
spools of film . (Today this is a
laboratory process but at that time it
involved the painstaking work of
cranking the film back and running
it twice or more through the camera. )
All the images were subsequently
combined to create the scene . This
consisted of two spools of clouds,
one of the miniatur e village 'in
motion,' and one roll with a woman
sitting on a knoll and demons poised
on the edge of a cliff (all of whom
observe the arrival of the witches) in
the foreground , silhouetted against
landscape features . Nine strips of
film were then run not less than
eight times together through an
experimental optical printer
Ankerstjerne had develope d . The
techniques he employed on this film
were state -of-the-art and he also
managed to create an animated
stop-motion monster that can be
seen at one point in another scene .
The cast was composed in the
main of professional actors , many
from the stage . Some of Denmark's
most revered movie stars are
glimpsed in The Witch for the first
time . Christensen himself played the
Devil with obvious relish (and no
small amount of theatrical over
acting in period style ) .
B u t the lady who stole the show
was an amateur , a 78-year - old
woman by the name of Maren
Pedersen . She played Maria, the
weaver , an accu sed witc h .
Christensen had 'discovered' her
one evening as he strolled out of the
main gate of the city's famed Tivoli
amusement park. The wrinkled old
woman was off to the side, sitting there selling flowers . She
reached towards him. With a clutch of violets and he was
instantly struck by her appearance. He bought a bunch for
two crowns and struck up a conversation.
Pedersen had been educated in her yo1,1.th as a nurse . In her day she had been rather well off, at one point operating
her own small clinic, but later things went downhill for her
and now she was dirt poor, living at a home for aged women
and selling whatever she could during the days . She was
unnerved when this strange man then and there offered her
the leading role in his movie. As he began to describe it she
became increasingly apprehensive . She was a religious woman
and feared that participation in such a thing would somehow
be a betrayal of her beliefs . Yet he was a charming and
persuasive gentleman, and on top of it they could converse in
the same dialect as she came from the same part of Jutland .
She fmally agreed.
As journalist Mogens Brandt would relate , the first tim.e
Pedersen arrived at the studio the receptionist mistakenly sent
her directly in to see Christensen . He had donned his devil
mask and applied make-up in preparation for the shooting of
a scene . He was more or less naked and painted over the
whole of his body in such a way that his skin appeared
covered with pustules . He had large fan-shaped ears , horns
protruding from his forehead and a long flickering tongue.
"Good lord! It's the Evil One!" she gasped in a near
swoon.27 Christensen tried to calm her.
"How do you know what the devil looks like?" he asked.
She pulled out a dog-eared prayer book and showed him a
picture.
"He looks like that!"
He tried to explain to her that that was only a picture and
that the Devil didn't really exist, but she was having none of it .
(This episode is related in the filin itself.) She had seen the
Devil with her own two eyes. Sometimes at night he came to
her and sat down on the edge of her bed, and she would throw
the sheets up over her head in a fright and pray to the Lord
three times . After that, as a rule, he was usually gone when she
peeked back out.
Years later Christensen would talk about how fabulously
inspiring it had been to work with Maren Pedersen. She
brought 'the real thing' with her into the studio; the kind of
superstitious nature and belief in mysticism that had been
commonplace during the Middle Ages . All that the film was
about was still alive in her fragile body. She was a kind of muse
for him, her withered face a portal back into the darkest
reaches of antiquity, and he turned that face directly into the
camera, exposing every wrinkle and crevice with an
unflinching hand. Today this might s e em unforgivably
exploitative but at the time it was exclusively praised as a
stroke of casting brilliance that imbued the film with a searing
authenticity. And after all , he was paying her, right? By some
accounts she enjoyed being a prima donna for a while and
getting rides home after work in a big car.2s
And yet some accounts of the filming can only b e described
as disturbing. Actor Ib Sch¢nberg's frrst meeting with Pedersen was one such unsettling encounter, witnessing as he did how
Christensen had fastened a leash onto the woman's leg which
he pulled in order to get her to move toward or away from the
camera. A stroke of casting genius or pure exploitation? As
critic Tage Heft enthused, "During a torture scene the amateur
performer Maren Pedersen really was about to faint .
Christensen dried the sweat and tears off her face so that she
above: The elderly Maren Pedersen being interrogated by priests.
could continue . No 'honest' actor could play it so honestly."
Christensen himself hailed her as "excellent in the torture
scenes," although he would state that at no point whatsoever
did she have any idea what the whole thing was about.
Scholars have grappled with the question of what kind of
filmmaker and artist Benjamin Christensen was , yet all of this
more directly begs the question of what kind of person he was .
The shooting of the movie resembled more than anything else a
cult-like exercise in blind obedience , in getting other people to
play a part in one's own personal fantasies . Here more than in
any other film he was attempting to create his own world.
This hardly detracts from his accomplishment. On the
contrary; the best films are often personal fantasies brought
to life by obsessed directors , and all films are about
convincing other people (actors , audience , reviewers , etc . ) to
buy into your fantasies , but to what degree was the director
himself caught up in his own creation? It's hard to say. The
academic writing on the man that exists has failed to pose
basic questions about who the real Benjamin Christensen
was . Here was a man pulling an old lady around at the end of
a rope , a man who cast himself as the Devil and who had
beautiful witches kiss the buttocks of that hairy and frightful
figure . And here was a man who persuaded one of the
actresses to spit on a picture of the baby Jesus (a much more
daring transgression in that day and age) .
Christensen had always believed that actors must immerse
themselves in their roles. What then might the Devil demand of
young, attractive witches in exchange for his supernatural
favours? And what might the witches be willing to do in
exchange? There was little doubt about that; it was spelled out
in the film - they would do anything for a pile of gold. What
would they do in real life for the pile of gold of becoming famous
movie stars? The making of the movie paralleled the story it was
telling in uncanny ways . During the filming Christensen lived in
quarters that were attached to the studio . What might that have
made possible? To what degree did his personal fantasies figure
into this professional fantasy he was creating?
The Witch, like many film productions , was an exercise in
power and control, and there is no doubt that Christensen had
not only total creative freedom but also total control. The film
was being shot in the utmost secrecy - and at night! (when
producers from Svensk Filrnindustri were least likely to drop
by and nose around. ) As he would later relate , "The film deals
with hysteria and the dark side of human nature , and when
the sun shines in the day it is impossible to call forth precisely
those feelings in the actors . "29 He wanted to bring forth the
actor's dark sides , but what about his own dark side?
He reportedly stressed them almost to the breaking point.
As described in one report, "For key scenes he consciously
strove to create a sense of real hysteria on the set. He let the
actors do make-up and then wait. He began to shoot scenes
and then stopped. He made sure they got a bit of food and then
went through the whole process again from the beginning, up
to that point having actually not yet shot a single metre of
film . . . and then when the clock struck four in the morning and
the actors were out of their minds for real, then he b egan to
shoot the scenes he would use. "30
Time doesn't heal all wounds , but twenty years on some of
the surviving actors were able to look back at their experiences
during the filming in a somewhat more rose-coloured light.31
Clara Pontoppidan (a nun) : It was all like an adventure out
there in Tajfelbays Alle . I went straight over there from the
Dagmar theatre in the evening and often acted through the night
until sunrise, and was then generously treated to a car ride
home . . . I remember those days as a 'working high' . . . When once
in a while late at night we grew dead tired, a good brand of
Champagne appeared on the table and in that way the hard
work and partying was part and parcel of the experience . . . And
yet now, many years later, I must confess that itfilled me with
fear. After all, that was an intense performance I was asked to
give. Only a man like Benne could have persuaded me to spit
upon a picture of the baby Jesus . . .
A n u n driven lo masochislicjanlasies by her belief in the Devil.
Elith Pio (a monk) : My memory of those working days is s til l
crys tal clear and that owes to the fact that we were so very
inspired. Benne was so tremendously inspiring . and it was clear
to many of us that this man we worked for was ahead of his
time. However I 'd be exaggerating if I said the filming was
idyllic. It was anything but, especiallyfor me, a s inner who had
forced himself on a young virgin and therefore had to be
wh ipped - and whipped I was. emphatically - by the monk,
Aage Hertel. That was a veritable thrashing he laid down upon
m y naked back . . . Urifortunately we only got to see the scenes
; i : �/ , ! I '
A greedy old hag gives herself to the Devil and is rewarded with gold coins.
we were in, and one was only able to move about the s tudio in
the most clandestine manner. But one day I managed to s neak
away and see some of the other scenes being shot, including one
where Benne was playing the Devil . I mus t confess his
peiformance gave me a shock. That was unforgettable!
Astrid Holm (Middle-class woman) : I remember that
everything that took place out there was very daring . I s uffered
the ravages of all possible types of torture instruments , was
dragged off by brutal hands and eventually met a painful death!
It was very exciting to be part of a film that aimed to do more
than just entertain . . .
Aage Hertel (a monk) : In the searing summer heat, wearing a
wig, I played a number of roles in The Witch. I was the monk
with fangs and the Devil with a rubber mask, etc. It was
frightful! . . . I suffered it all for Benne 's sake. The stuff with the
mask was the worst. . . it was glued onto my face in a distorted
fashion and when they took it off thefirst time my skin came off
with it. Around my eyes was just bloody flesh.
Alice O 'Fredericks (a nun) : [O'Fredericks was an office girl
who had run an errand out to the studio and was spotted by
Christensen, who had her do a screen-test. -ed. ] That was my
first role. I was 1 7 years old and involved in that shocking scene
in which 30 to 40 nuns went amok! Once I got over the first
difficult period of shyness, I aggressively threw myself into the
spirit the part demanded and screamed the profane curses.
Afterwards, when we were all level-headed again, we found it
all to be extremely upsetting. We were really bizarre.
Emmy Schj1Snfeld (a witch) : I played a witch who was in love
with the devil and in a dream I got a pile of gold. Yet my best
and worst - scene was when I }lew up through the chimney!
Even though on my }light through the sky I was aided by special
ejfects, it was not a pleasant experience to be bound with a
strap around the waist and hoisted up under the ceiling of the
studio . When I think back to that scene, as the belt was
tightened and cut into me, the pain returns . . . Those were
strange days out in Hellerup, not least to suddenly one day find
the wooded grounds of the studio transformed into a witches '
lair. They did that by digging up all the trees and then planting
them again upside-down so that the roots were sticking out into
the air. The memory of that sight still makes my heart pound.
The grounds looked spooky and fantastic after the 'operation. '
?.J
lb Sch,.,;nberg (a monk) : Christensen ordered me to go to the
barber in Hellerup who, to my family 's horror, 'kronragede ' mel
[given a monk's hatrcut, bald on top ) . All for the sake of art. I
was after all only 1 7 years old and found it all to be a great,
almost supernatural experience. And there I met Maren
Pedersen whom I shall never forget. She was a wise and a nice
person, but the memory I have of her is not the best; Benne had
fashioned a leash on her leg which he pulled on as a means of
getting her to move toward or away from the camera.
Karen Winther (an accused witch) : It was a shock to go from
Lau Lauritzen's cozy and cheeifulfarces at Nordisk Film to the
Benjamin Christensen-esque nights where I performed amongst
the most macabre props and settings. One day in particular I sat
for 8 hours in a torture chair - and to be honest I wasn't worth
much when I got out. Nonetheless it is an experience I recall only
with fondness.
Benjamin Christensen (The Devil) : It is a state of bliss for an
artist once in his lifetime to get permission to do what he wants .
That happened with The Witch.
Christensen launched into the editing process that fall with
some apprehension. How would the censors react to some of
the more intense scenes? This was indeed frightful stuff. In the
first sequence of the dramatic re-enactments that start chapter
two of the film we see a couple of old witches cooking up a
magic potion down in their subterranean latr in 1 488 (a year
after the publication of The Witch Hammer) . One of the squat
old hags extracts a rotting human hand from a faggot of sticks
and snaps off a finger to use in her witch's brew. Later the
gentle viewer encounters cannibalism, blasphemy, sex with
Actress Karen Winther plays the young woman who is accused of witchcraft andjorced to endure the torture chair.
demons, adultery, masturbation, the cutting up of foetuses,
and so forth. Deformities are displayed, torture devices are
demonstrated. But for many the sex was the worst of it.
John Ernst, writing in 1967 while Denmark was in the
throes of a sexual revolution, commented thusly on that
aspect of the film: "In spite of the pedagogic way he presents
his case, that [sexual aspect] can easily startle the modern
viewer when they see this 1922 film for the first time,
acclimated to pornography though they may be. In what other
film does a scene take place where the beautiful young
above: An old witch prepares a love potion.
opposite: Witches kissing the Devil"s arse.
witches prance up to the Devil himself to kiss his buttocks?
When is the last time the reader has witnessed in a film a
scene where two old hags urinate into a pissing pot and heave
the contents against a neighbour's door? In what other film
are there so many images of sexual perversions, torture,
animal abuse, blasphemy and naked women? ... "32
Christensen was pushing the censors into perhaps an
even more compromising position than he had forced the
beautiful young witches - he was forcing them to pass
judgement on something new. In Sweden they even called in
l,.:.:
a couple of neurologists to sit with
the censors deciding the cas e .
Early o n i n the process h e had
wanted to involve men of science in
the project to give it the stamp of
credibili ty, but this idea went
nowhere because, as he would later
claim, scholars wanted nothing to
do with a medium as disreputable
as film. Once his movie was
completed he did manage to solicit
testimony from a professor by the
name of Johansen who gave it high
marks and declared that he
shouldn't take out a single frame .
Whether or not the 'worst bits'
were edited out at some stage before
or after Johansen passed judge
ment, as at least one commentator
claimed, is impossible to know
today, but considering what was left
in it is hard to imagine what
Christensen could have wanted to
include that was more extreme . In
any case, by the fall of 1 922 the film
was ready to play, sumptuously
tinted in red, gold, green and , for
night scenes, blue .33 Divided into
seven chapters, The Witch had a
running time of 1 04 minutes, which
was longer than average for feature
films of the period.
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P�T�sa·� t e ;�;·���� � Fi l m s = M a g a s i n 4. Aargang. Nr. 3 .
, ��, Benj amin Chr is tensen Fi lmen �
, H E K S E N " Kulturhistorisk Film i 7 Akter
Forfattet og iscenesat af Benjamin Christensen
I HOYE DROLLERN E '
B e n y t D E T N Y E A X E L B O R G H A M M E R I C H S G A D E - - T E.L E F O N: 1 0 6 3 2·
Cover of an original programme for the Danish premiere of The Witch (Heksen) .
�ttlllic 9lettctiun tu ��� e i'Site� t
�he world premiere of The Witch took place in Stockholm on -" 1 8 September, 1 9 22, with a print that contained at least 1:\vo brief cuts , while the Danish premiere, which featured an uncut version, was held on 7 November at Copenhagen's Palads (Palace) Theatre where Christensen had marvelled at Les miserables seven years before . Originally the city's railroad terminal building, it had been converted into a grand moVie
theatre ill 1 9 1 2 . With 2 , 300 seats , it was the second largest in
Europe at that time and employed a staff of 1 00 . Opening
music composed by Launy Gr(Zlndahl played as well-dressed
patrons took their seats . Once the auditorium was full , the
carbon arc lamps in the giant projectors were lit with a hiss
and the house lights faded. A brilliant beam of light sliced
through the darkness to splash the first images onto the screen
as the original score , composed and now conducted in front of
a thirty-piece orchestra by Jacob Gade, majestically rang out.
The film began with a lecture by Christensen who stood by
a pile of books - his sources . He then gave an encapsulation of
the movie's theme. Filmed separately by another cinematog
rapher, this opening was a unique way for the director to
personally introduce himself to the audience. And then the film itself began.
Of all the scenes , the flight of the witches to Bloksbjerg
received the heartiest applause, and at the end of the show
there was a rousing ovation. At this point it would have been
natural for Christensen to come out and take a bow but he was
nowhere to be found. Before the show he had given instruc
tions that a sheet listing the literary sources upon which the
+7
film was based be placed upon every seat so that viewers might
appreciate the research that went into the making of it, but as
people were taking their seats he didn't see any paper. He soon
discovered that the bales of notes had been tossed out into the
back by the trash, and it was reckoned that he had stalked off
somewhere in a rage.
Everyone seemed to agree that this was something new; a
film that had nothing to do with love or intrigues , a film that
had no heroes or plot in the normal sense, that presented no
conflict to be neatly resolved by the last reel . A film that had no
happy ending.
After that opinion divided sharply.
The most outspoken criticism was voiced by the daily, B . T. ,
as the folloWing article from their 8 November, 1 922 edition
testifies .
TAKE THE WITCH OFF THE SCREEN
Benjamin Christensen's The Witch was technically a masterpiece.
But its topic ,was ajatejul mistake.
Hardly any other film in the history of Copenhagen movie-going
has managed to attract such a prestigious audience for its grand
premiere as Benjamin Christensen's The Witch, the event
having taken place yesterday at the Palads Theatre.
Not only were all the VIPs of the Danish film and theatre
world present, but the seats were also occupied by those from
the most sophisticated and jashionable classes of society, and
when the opening (news) shorts jaded out and the overture rang
out broad and majestically from the orchestra pit, an expectant
shudder passed through the crowd.
Benjamin Christensen obviously knows how to arouse
expectations to the maximum. For two long years the city has
been abuzz about The Witch. Rumours have circulated about the
insane cost of the film while contradictory stories about the
scenes being shot inside the fortified confines of the Hellerup
studio have been exchanged in hush-hush tones by word of
mouth. At one point it was rumoured that an actress had refused
to play the role the director had assigned her because she
considered it an affront to her decency . Soon enough those kinds
of rumours proved to be unfounded, and, to the contrary, the
actors had peiformed under Christensen's leadership w ith
enthusiasm and devotion.
An alluring veil of secrecy was laid over the making of the
film, and not even the cinematographers or the bearers of the big
rolls of raw film stock perceived what they were really helping to
create . . . They all just had a feeling that this was a completely
different kind of film and that they were embarking on ajourney
into a new and mysterious realm that would lead to the rebirth
of the art of cinema and mark the beginning of a renaissance in
the medium.
Last night thatfeeling had transmitted itself to the audience
who studied the first b lue (tinted) texts with rapt absorptiory. as
they appeared on the distant screen, thefirst metres of this new
work which would bring Benjamin Christensen victory or defeat.
Did he triumph?
He could have. There is no doubt that the broad public which
the film medium has attracted is about to loose patience with
movies - as this movie demonstrated. Time and time again the
empty smiles of the audience indicated they were being bored
by the empty sensations. A desire for a more weighty experience
which would not just entertain but also enrich lay in the air. And
Christensen's basic idea, to create a popular film lecture, an
'essay of the silver screen, ' is undoubtedly an ingenious attempt
to accommodate this desire.
ffu!ific :(1.actio11 to dhe '111tc!i' fY
He could have chosen to present one of history 's great
figures in afashion not bound by standardfilm conventions but
flush with the intensity and rich colours of the truth. He could
have addressed a basic human question w hich lies in
thousands of hearts and begs an answer. And with the great
sums of money he had at his disposal, with aH the technical
expertise and the directorial mastery that The Witch bears
witness to, he could have created a film which would have
struck the audience as a revelation, opening up the doors of
movie theatres to a new public . . .
Instead he has chosen to turn down one of history 's dark
side streets, taking up for consideration the subject of the Middle
Ages ' belief in witchcraft in order to compare it to modern
superstitious tendencies. The basic error is not that the topic is
distant and specific but thatfrom first image to last it touches
upon not only the hysteria of the times but also upon, as he
himself terms it. . . the unvarnished perversity.
This is a chapter from the dark side of human history, a
story of sickness that he chooses to delve into . It is no more
appropriate to read aloud from the daily logs of an insane
asylum for an evening 's entertainment than it is to play The
Witch for a large and varied public where youth is in the
overwhelming majority.
Had- Christensen said, 'I have the money which shaH be
used to make afilm only intended to be screenedfor the scientif
ically educated, for the authorities and for seasoned profes
sionals, ' no one would object. It would stand as a bizarre but
interesting experiment. But when he throws open the doors to
the masses and shows it to the young women of the town and
to office worker Hansen and his beloved under the guise of
education, then one must protest, and in the name of film protest
forcefully!
Witches ' Sabbath on the Silver Screen
Let us take a rough look at Benjamin Christensen's film lecture.
It begins with classic documentation. We see on the silver
screen not living pictures but woodcuts of scenarios from the
Middle Ages w hich present the story of belief in w itchcraft,
while a pointer stick draws attention to various details . This is
stern and straightjorward stuff, no false advertising here. It is
immediately apparent that this is no film in the traditional
sense.
But suddenly the images come to life and the same
situations told by woodcuts now flicker upon the stage in liv ing
re-enactments . Christensen has reconstructed the anatomy of
a witch persecution from the Middle Ages. He shows how a
whole village is gripped by hysteria. An inhabitant lays s ick
and of course it is assumed that he 's been cursed by a w itch.
A travelling w itclifinder general arrives and examines the
ajflicted man, declaring that w ithout a doubt his condition has
been caused by a curse, and immediately a hunt is onfor the
witch. Naturally suspicio n falls upon a loathsome o ld woman
who comes around every day and begs at the door, a woman
who gobbles away at her ¢llebr¢d [a porridge made of bread
and non-alcoholic b eer ] w ith wrinkled fingers. [This was
Maren Pedersen, and before she digs into the runny slop she
puts a couple of fingers to her nose and blows a glob of snot
on the floor. -ed. ]
The sick man's daughter accuses the old hag of the heinous
deed and she 's dragged before the court and subjected to a
painful interrogation. All the bestial torture instruments of the
Middle Ages are applied right up there on the silver screen;
thumbscrews, barbed neck bands, foot-crushers and fire. For
over half an hour this orgy of sadism is celebrated up on the
ffu!ilic &action to ''d!i'e �fl'itcfi''
screen. Metre after metre of film rolls
through the camera, which is frozen
on the old woman 's tormented
mummy- l ike face, boring in w ith
shameless close-ups until the feeling
of nausea overwhelms.
Of co urse the old woman
co nfesses to every th ing they 've
accused her of and more on top of it.
In a series of pictures one sees the
whole of the witches ' Sabbath as
their poor, s ick, perverted brains
conceived it.
The Borifires Blaze
And it is s upposedly not just this old
woman who has been to B loksbjerg,
but al l those that the daughter hates ,
including the cow that kicked out at
her as well as two old women who
had practiced their unappetiz ing art
[ of throwing the contents of piss
pots at their neighbour's door ] - all
have participated in that w ild dance
around the old devil . [ The wording
here is somewhat confusing: it is
actually Maria, under torture, who
names practically everyone she
knows as co- conspirators . -ed . ]
The Judge believes every word
she says .
Bonfires blaze over the whole
town and the judge himself feels
p lagued by the Dev i l 's hand
maidens. A young handsome monk
has felt a sting on the wrist where a
beautiful young virg in has grabbed
him, a nd to make the burn ing
sensation go away he has himself
whipped, but the fire cannot be
extinguished by the lashings. The
virgin is therefore a witch. Before we
witnessed the old mummy- l ike
woman being tormented, now i t 's
young female flesh and body parts
that are flayed while she is broken
on the wheel before our eyes .
It is true that these th ings
happened, God help us . but - hand
on your heart - which ins tincts are
aroused in a large and diversely
composed audience by this kind of
brutality when it is inflicted upon a
young , undressed actress?
The dance of the wi tches
continues. The nuns are gripped by a
mysterious hysteria in front of the
altar. . . the devil lays himself down
between married couples in their
beds . He is everywhere and al l
hearts pound in fear at the prospect
of meeting him in theflesh on the next
street corner or in the next room!
The Embarrassing Ending
Finally Christensen draws his conclusions by advancing a
theory.
The belief in witches has passed but the superstitious
tendencies that nourished it live on. The existence of fortune
tellers, kleptomaniacs and hysterics of every stripe is but a
modern echo of what the ignorant souls of the Middle Ages were
possessed by, but it is in this concluding chapter that
Christensen suffers his biggest defeat from a purely artistic
standpoint, in the process casting doubt on the seriousness
which lays behind this gloomy film. The scene suggesting that
today the airplane has replaced the witch is but an insipid
witticism, and at the end when he presents us with the modern
version of the witch who once burned on the bonfire but is now
a fashionable young kleptomaniac [kleptomania = compulsive
behaviours = witchcraft -ed. ] pictured undergoing therapeutic
shower treatment at a nerve clinic - this left one sitting there not
with a bad taste in one 's mouth but w ith an embarrassed taste.
The Undressed
Nudity is plentiful in Christensen's film. The screenjlashes with
the whitejlesh of bare backs and naked silhouettes wandering
in the secret lairs of the Devil's realm. But it is not the nudity
which is most offensive about the film. It is the Satanic
perversity and gruesomeness which leaps from it like flames, a
kind of unfathomable, plumbless evil - humankind's chimera
that everyone knows has existed down through the ages . . But
when that is caught andfenced into a cell, whether that be in a
prison or in a madhouse, it is not to the accompaniment of
Wagner and Chopin, nor is it in front of a fashionable public
A beautiful young witch-to-be g ives herself to the Devil.
seated in comfortably upholstered movie seats. It is not for the
young men and women who have ventured into the magic world
of the movie theatre.
if that was 'Mr. Anyone at all ' who made this film then we
could respond with a kick or a shrug. But that person is
Benjamin Christensen who, even with this major mistake,
proves that he is one of the jew upon which Danish film can
build its future. And then it becomes a different matter. We can
therefore end this review in no other way than to voice deep
regret that he has allowed his considerable abilities to lead him
into this blind alley.
(One can only hope) that he w illfind his way back into the
light again as quickly as possible and create that great popular
film that will do justice to his talents.
But regarding The Witch we ultimately have but one
request; take it off the screen as fast as possible!
Debate about the film continued to rage in the wake of the
premiere, and on 9 November B . T. elaborated on their concerns
in a follow-up piece .
FILM AND POPULISM
While B . T. stood rather alone among the city 's press in its
appraisal of the new Benjamin Christensen film, The Witch,
we have in turn received cons iderable proof that our evaluation
of the movie was in accord w ith w hat many of those attending
the premiere thought. And the question we are constantly
asked is this; how in all the world has this film been able to
pass the censors?
We would on this occasion draw attention to the fact that we
are not among those who constantly cry out for the censorship of
film. We have also not taken that position in this case s ince we
understand the censor's v iewpoint in letting the film pass. They
must also once in a while show a b it of courage. And, aj"ter all,
it is not the acting in this film that exploits the viewer's basest
instincts. The Witch is a deeply serious work, written and
staged by an artist who undeniably occupies a leading position
in his field, who consciously and manfully has fought against
the emptiness and sterility that characterizes so many films .and
who has pioneered new modes of expression in the medium.
We understand the motives of the censors who refused to
prohibit the film in advance, they having no desire to quash
Christensen's attempts to create something new. With that said, we must protest that this film is now, evening after epening, attracting a sensation-seeicing public. The task that Christensen has set himself is to solve or explain a cultural-historic problem or situation through his art. We believe in the future of film and we also believe that the medium as such will begin to address itself to these [ cultural-historic] issues. But film is and will always be a popular medium, an art form for 'the people. '
As we previously wrote, 'It is no more appropriate to read aloudfrom the daily logs of an insane asylumfor an evening 's entertainment than it is to play The Witch for a large and varied public where youth is in the overwhelming majority. ' This is precisely the core of the case. We have no doubt that the director of The Witch will be able to produce laudatory quotes from renowned psychiatr:ists and history professors in his defence, but the (professional) v iews these men take on the unflinching sadism, the torture and the nudity - and all that occurs during the wild and appalling witches ' Sabbath - has no relevance to how the broader public, not least young v iewers, will relate to the film. With the general public there is no understanding of cultural-historic context and no knowledge of psychiatry is brought to bear. The film arouses a different set of instincts in the general audience, and this kind of attraction we can best do without.
When one lectures to a general public and attempts to teach them about the darkness of ancient times, one assumedly does so without unveiling a series of exhibits which drip w ith blood and border on the pornographic. One must trust that said lecturer has the ability to reproduce these images in such a way so that they do not disgust or titillate the audience .
Benjamin Christensen lacks this ability - and he has caused grave offence. To his mind conveying the truth about the subject
57
is synonymous with presenting it in · the most harshly realistic terms. Well, no one can prevent him from having that percept�on, but in so doing he hasfoifeited the right to deliver his lectures to a broad public. And no one can deny that the film theatre attracts one of the broadest publics in our country . One should not be nauseated or titillated in a movie theatre. One should be entertained or preferably educated, or in best case elevated.
One might have expected the censors to be conscious of this to a somewhat greater degree, and maybe to have hit upon a compromise solution that would have pre-empted the sensationalism and morbidity that took. complete possession of this film.
The daily paper Social Demok.raten agreed that it was all just
too much. "Many of the images exude such raw realism that the dominating reaction is one of nausea. . . the viewer suffers
the torments along with the victims on the screen. The film
seems itself a product of the beastliness , torture , bonfires and
insanity that it means to critique. Even Griffith and his staff
could hardly have created anything like that . "
The case that B . T. makes against The Witch reads like a
textbook definition of 'exploitation cinema' that would come to
flourish in America in the Thirties , the modus operandi of its
progenitors being to crassly and with premeditation - and
definitely for profit - palm off lurid spectacle on the public
under cover of providing enlightenment and edification.
Censors were prone to be more sympathetic to films that had
moral or educational intent, and rogue producer -directors
tried to have it both ways : they loaded their cheaply made films
with sex, violence , nudity etc. to attract the paying public , but
larded it all with sanctimonious moralizing to placate
puritanical elements of the public (who were hostile to movies
to begin with) . Hollywood itself employed this strategy via what
Maria the weaver {Maren Pedersen) corifesses under torture that she gave birth to demons .
would come to be known as "compensating moral values , "
meaning that the bad guy could have all the fun and sex he
wanted in the first nine reels but he had to pay for it in the last
reel . usually by dropping dead in a hail of bullets . Bigger
budget Hollywood productions conveyed this via action while
Poverty Row producers who could hardly afford much 'action'
conveyed it in the tone of their films .
Christensen was clearly anything but a fly-by-night
"exploitationist. · He was an artist and a master craftsman and
The Witch was a true work of obsession, not just some hoary
attempt to separate the customers
from their hard-earned money, but
his motives remain in question. He
liked to see himself as a man of
science and rationalism , but he was
also drawn to sensational subj ect
matter. With The Witch he was
attempting to show how ridiculous
and horrible primitive superstitions
were . "The belief in evil spirits ,
sorcery and witchcraft is the result of
naive notions about the mystery of
the universe ," he would say. But he
still made it all appear very
intriguing. mysterious and scary and
filled the screen with beautiful semi
and not-so-semi-naked women . As
has been shown . this struck some as
dishonest and exploitative . Was this
education or entertainment or just
pure salaciousness? Or something
infinitely more sinister? And the
shots of deformed women he included
in the final chapter (a hunchback and
a woman with a facial deformity in
close-up) had a startling impact.
however briefly presented.
He had his defence down pat . The
film had a moral and that was
contained in the concluding 'modern
section , ' which aimed to show how
susceptible modern man still was to
the seductions of the 'dark side . ' While many thought this the weakest part of the film, it served an important function. There
was no human villain to be shot dead in the last reel , but it
held out the prospect that there was a constructive lesson to
be learned from it all . This was the film's official raison d 'etre and many bought it and figured Christensen was entitled to
some dispensation. As one writer put it , " . . . consideration for
the modern public's aesthetic feelings must yield for more
important considerations , and the censors have naturally
permitted s c enes which otherwis e would have b een
unthinkable . "34
Other reViews of The Witch at the time were more mixed
than the 'attack' published in B . T. Politilcen praised the photography and the acting, while
K¢benhavn pointed out that Christensen had rendered the
public a service by revealing that moVies were more than just
acting and (filmed) novels . "The Witch was an unconditional
success , " stated the latter publication, "but will it become a
success with the public? This is perhaps more in doubt. Many
will come because they are attracted by the sensational subj ect
matter and the artistic quality of the film, but one doesn't get
people interested in (cultural) history just because it's shown
on film. All in all a strange evening which in many ways points
to the beginning of a new direction in the film medium. "
A more positive if still mixed appraisal o f the film was
offered up in the daily K¢benhavn on 9 September, 1 922 :
THE WITCH AND THE OTHERS
The premiere of The Witch at the Palads Theatre has g iven rise to a lot of shouting . So much so that some voices have grown hoarsejrom shock over specific images contained in the jilm. It
9>u!i!ic �actie:tt to ":J"!ie 1f'ltcli" 61
is possible that one scene here or there could have been cut out, even if they were just as historically accurate as the rest. We shall not become embroiled in thatfeud but wouldjust point out that in any event the film is a serious work which cannot be measured with the same yardstick one uses on an American beach-comedy. And finally, before one gives voice to outraged protests, one ought to think about what we have put up with over the last decade when it comes to films full of affectation, mushy sentimentality and sleaze, and which perpetuate fraud on the silver screen, consciously and unconsciously . We have viewed and thereby supported thousands of really unhealthy
films. Let us embrace the attempts that are made to find new ways and new directionsforwardfor cinema.
The public was apparently just as divided as the pres s , the
tumultuous applause at the end notwithstanding. Crowd
response is a strange thing. Perhaps doubters just got swept
along in the spirit of the moment, and there were indeed
doubters , as the 9 November issue of K¢benhavn attested.
IS THE WITCH A GOOD FILM?
As expected, the premiere of Benjamin Christensen's The Witch
took place iri the 'Sign of Sensation. ' But some in the audience were also shocked and/ or offended. As far as one could determine the reaction of the public was very much divided. The audience was certainly not completely 'with ' the film. We have asked a couple of people who were there what they thought about the film and this is what they told us:
Director of the Royal Theatre, Poul Nielsen, finds The
Witch highly interesting:
I rarely go to see movies but I'd heard so much about The
Witch that I had to go see it. I must say straight off that !found it a highly interesting work. Benjamin Christensen is a peculiar and ingenious fellow, and his ability to get things done is rather amazing .
Takefor example his working methods. Hefinds an elderly woman who probably has no conception of how to act. She is subjected to torture while in reality she merely moves her mouth, muttering incessantly. But nonetheless the director gradually manages to arouse her sense of fantasy and her eyes acquire the appropriately spooky expression.
(Naturally) it is true enough that the topic can be 'perverse, ' but the director - the lecturer - cannot be held responsible for the
fact that back in the Middle Ages these things were being set in motion by people with perverse imaginations. It is wrong to accuse Christensen of wallowing in sensationalism.
Professor Viggo Christiansen, Dr. of Medicine, finds the
parts on the Middle Ages excellent, but he misses a
witch-burning.
That's nonsense when people claim that there is exploitation at play. The Witch is excellently made. Andfurthermore I've been told that the 'worst bits ' were cut out. It's stupid to talk about sensationalism - that hasn't at all been the approach Christensen used. Had that been his intention, there were stronger things in his source material he could have chosen to bring forth.
I think that the scenes of the Middle Ages were in all ways excellent. They were authentic renderings of works that can be found, for example, in the Bibliotheque-diabolique. The only thing I missed was a real witch-burning . And he could have easily shown us that. [Bodies do dangle on a bonflre in the last
shot -ed. ] The modern part I did not so much care for.
I consider The Witch to be an historic film which has succeeded in reproducing the atmosphere and details· necessary to give us insight into the psychology of those times.
The Witch was apparently successful enough with the public
in Sweden and Denmark. Swedish reviewers , however, took a dim view of it until an influential commentator by the name
of Dr. Fogelquist, a man who was normally no fan of the film
medium, praised it in a widely read article in Dagens Nyheter and turned the tide of critical opinion in its favour - although
it was reportedly thereafter b anned for many years . Or was it
simply forgotten? In any cas e it proved to b e the kind of
financial disaster the studio didn't need at a p oint when
admissions were already declining and Hollywoo d was
becoming more competitive .
In other countries The Witch pr oved much more
problematic.
Eight-thousand Catholic women protested in the streets
when it finally opened in France in 1 92 6 , demonstrating
against it outside the P aris theatre where La sorcellerie a travers les ages , as it was titled, premiered. as In a complaint
to the police they claimed that it was immoral and a mockery
of the Church. "The French press kept their distance from the
film, " noted a Danish writer at the time, "its exhibition
sparking a wider debate ab out the screening of foreign films . "
Parisian surrealists liked it b etter an d i t b ecame one o f their
favourites .
In English-speaking countries no one dared show the film
for many years . In America the New York cens orship
committee s creened it for a select audience of cultural movers
and shakers , just as they had for B lind Justice , but The Witch was infinitely more controversial and the chairman of the
LA SORCELLERIE A TRAVERS
LES AGES UN FILM DE
Benjamin CHRISTENSEN
Poster for a French theatrical re-release of The Witch.
committee was fired b ecaus e of it and Christensen was asked
to vacate the hotel where he was staying.36
Over the decades the Danish press would often refer to
the quote in The New York. Times that stated that the film was
"25 years ahead of its time . " The actual wording, however, is
somewhat more ambiguous : "Come b ack with your film in 25
years , Mr. Christens en, and mayb e then America will b e
mature enough t o understand your art . "37
In Germany the film fared s omewhat b etter. Erich
Pommer, head producer at the all-powerful UFA studio , was
a big fan and arranged private s creenings of the uncut
version for various groups of artists and s cholars who
responded very positively.
Average Germans only got to see a much more edited
down version when it opened there in June 1 924 , the result
of long negotiations b etween Christens en and German
Catholic groups that reportedly only left the 'torso' of the film
intact. Nonetheless it played successfully in that country for
months .
Pommer held the film in such high esteem that he invited
Christensen to come to Germany and make movies for his
studio . The Dane eagerly accepted. The two follow-ups he had
envisioned, Helgeninde (The Wo man Saint) and Ander (Spirits ) were now out o f the question. (Magnusson had made him an
offer to direct eight more pictures but he had declined,
refusing to b e involved in 'assembly-line productions . ' ) And,
since no Danish studio wanted him now, Pommer's offer was
timely. "After The Witch," Christensen would recall , "I was out
in the cold for two years . When I finally got a chance at UFA,
I had to disprove that I was this 'literary experimentalist' that
everybody s aid I was , and so I made these purely commercial
fJlms . '3B
�bristensen's first 'purely commercial' ril:rn for UFA was His
�Mysterious Adventure (Seine Frau, die Unbekannte) , an
unevenly realized marital comedy that was both farce and
melodrama and came complete with a happy ending.
Nevertheless it displayed flashes of Christensen's visual
inventiveness . Op ening in B erlin in O ctob er of 1 9 23 ,
knowledgeable viewers could appreciate the typically
Christensen-es que erotic component that included a fantasy
sequence in which a Wife imagines what her husband is doing
with another woman behind closed doors . This prompted at
least one Danish critic to complain that he had "succumbed to
the temptation, as he had in The Witch, of investing his
greatest efforts on a series of scenes that pander in rather
embarrassing fashion to the unsavoury. "39
He then took temporary leave of his directorial duties to act
in Carl Dreyer's psychological drama, Michael , which was also
being shot in B erlin. B ased on a turn-of-the-century Danish
novel of same name by Herman Bang, it was the story of 'the
Master, ' an elderly artist (played by Christensen) whose
feelings for a young protege are ultimately betrayed.
Christens en and Dreyer were two very headstrong
individuals , with Pommer, among others , predicting they would
clash on the set - and they did. An article on the shooting
relates how they agreed not to call each other "idiot" since that
was a word the non-Danish personnel could understand.40
But the results were extraordinary, prompting effusive praise
for Christensen's performance in a film that Dreyer would
always consider one of his best.
This afforded some small measure of vindication for
Christensen after The Witch, which had quickly come to be
considered a fiasco , and no doubt it was an ego-boost for him
to see posters billing him as 'the Master. ' 'And yet , ' as Casper
Tybjerg notes , " . . . there is something eerily prescient about
having Christensen play an artist whose b est work is behind
him and who dies a bitter man. "4I
His next film for UFA was the English-spoken The Woman Who Did. It was based on a book that the British novelist
Grant Allen had published in 1 8 94. Allen had availed himself
of the opportunity to weigh in on the debate about 'free love'
that was then abroad but, despite dealing with the contro
versial subj ect of a woman who chooses to have a child
outside marriage , this was no hard-hitting expose and in later
years Christensen was wont to dismiss it as lightweight fluff.
There were other problems as well . The international cast of
Brits , Yanks , Rus sians and G ermans not only lacked
chemistry but could barely understand each other. As he later
wrote to a friend, " . . . none of the actors spoke the same
language and just pranced gaily around each other, and after
having spent the first day acting as an interpreter, I gave up .
The film had to be made quickly and I ended up just letting
them say what they wanted. It was a tower of B abel . "42 He
even sent a telegram to the backer in London advising him to
abandon the proj ect, but to no avail.
The Wo man Who Did opened in Decemb er 1 9 25 to
dismissive press . Christensen himself was more uncompro
mising in his assessment, going on to call it "the greatest . . .
fiasco of my life, and the only film of mine I never dared to
actually watch after I shot it. "43 As to whether it was really
that bad, today it must remain an open question since it
figures among the many 'lost' films of that era.
While Christensen had departed for Germany, a fair
number of his Scandinavian colleagues had chosen to set sail
in the other direction - to Hollywood. Among them was the
Swede, Victor Sjostrom, who had gone to work for MGM (his
last name Americanized to 'Seastrom') , for whom he directed
the studio's first real hit in 1 924, He Who Gets Slapped. He
managed to persuade Louis B . Mayer to view a print of The Witch. Mayer was impressed with what he s aw but also clearly
taken aback, wondering aloud as to whether Christensen was
a genius or a madman. (The Dane would quote this remark
over the years with a certain ironic pride. ) In any case Mayer
sent Christensen a telegram offering him a contract at MGM
and he accepted.
In February of 1 925 he arrived in Hollywood. This s ojourn
effectively put an end to his second marriage, to Sigrid Stah.l
whom he had wed in 1 922 (although they would not formally
divorce until 1 934) . But lonely in this new town he definitely
wasn't; a sizeable Scandinavian expat c ommunity that
included the likes of Sj ostrom, Stiller, and a young Greta Garb o
already existed and h e quickly b ecame an active p art o f it.
His first encounter with the Hollywood studio system was
a bit of a shock. As he would recall: "On the way over to
America I'd gotten the idea for a film called The Light Eternal [Det evige lys ] . I had most of the story in my head when I
arrived. I described it to one of MGM's supervisors , Mr. Harry
Rapf. He was so enthusiastic that he wrote me out a check for
5 ,000 dollars and told me to go b ack to my hotel room and
write the whole thing down. As I sat there in front of the
typewriter I realized to my horror that I couldn't recall essential
aspects of the story. The check began to burn a hole in my
pocket so I managed to think up a new story on the s ame topic.
Twenty-two highly paid writers who had achieved great
success in the worlds of literature and the theater and who
were now employed by MGM worked it over. Some months later
it was finished. Now it was called The Devil's Circus and of
course I couldn't recognize it at all. I told them that it would be
the greatest fiasco of all time . All of Metro's bosses laughed at
this idiot who believed he had directed a fiasco . "44
Cold comfort though it must have been, Christensen was
more or less correct, at least as far as the critics were
concerned. Although some praised its atmosphere and photog
raphy, they generally dismissed The Deva's Circus as melodra
matic, old-fashioned and lacking the subtle touch.
The studio writers had fashioned it into a romantic drama
set in some unspecified (but clearly German-resembling)
European city in order to capitalize on Christensen's -
Americanized to 'Christianson' - 'exotic' foreign origins . (MGM
would promote it as 'the first production in America of the
European film genius , B enjamin Christianson, ' and Variety agreed, calling it 'foreign and different. ' )
The plot centres on poor, friendless Mary (played by Norma
Shearer) who encounters Carl , a petty criminal with a record.
He has lecherous intentions but is disarmed by her innocence
and vulnerability and they find solace in each other's company.
Their happiness is short-lived when Carl is arrested again.
Mary, however, has managed to change him and as the police
drag him off to jail he promises to reform.
In the meantime she finds employment in the circus as a
trapeze artist, but things take a Violent turn when the lion-tamer
takes a fancy to her and rapes her one night in her wagon. This
sends his girlfriend into a jealous rage and she secretly loosens
the ropes of the trapeze, causing Mary to plummet to the ground
during her performance - and into a cage full of lions . She is
pulled out alive but has been crippled for life.
yo
The Great War is now raging. Carl has been released from
prison and joins the army. Upon being discharged he returns to
the city and becomes a cobbler, having made good on his vow to
go straight. He accidentally runs into Mary again, a cripple now
forced to sell string puppets on the street. (The puppet theme is
established at the start: "When the devil pulls the strings , all the
world must dance,' the opening title plate reads . Cut to a
grinning devil figure who functions as a kind of 'master
puppeteer. ') Deeply distraught by her tale of woe, Carl sets out to find and kill the lion-tamer. But when he discovers the terrible
fates that have befallen Mary's tormentors he can only conclude
that his work has already been done for him: the lion-tamer has
been blinded in the War and his girlfriend, sent to prison after
causing Mary's fall, is now a prostitute. Together again - on
Christmas Eve, no less - Mary miraculously begins to walk.
The film was Shearer's big breakthrough and did more for
her career than Christensen's . According to him the studio
was dead set against casting her in the lead and Irving
Thalberg had even warned him that if he did it would be 'his
funeral. ' Later on he overheard Thalberg concluding a phone
conversation with a tender goodbye to 'my beloved Norma. '
Some funeral, he thought.
Despite the indifferent press the picture did okay with the
public. It appeared to hint at better things to come for
Christensen and won him some respect in the Industry.
Life in Hollywood, on the other hand, presented a series of
more prosaic challenges as the dashing Dane tried to fit in. The
most insignificant things could tag a man as an outsider. For
example, he preferred to get his shoes re-soled instead of going
out and buying_ new ones , but in class-conscious Hollywood
this was a no-no : a successful director could not be seen
tramping around in re-soled shoes .
71
His reputation took a rather more severe beating when two
employees died on him. " . . . I had the cursed luck," he
remembered, "that two men who were to work with me on one
of the first films both went out and broke their necks in the
same week. For some time thereafter I felt people were keeping
their distance from me, and Larry Barrymore told me that it
was obvious why no one would work for me when my
employees were dropping dead. "45
He also managed to make enemies without even knowing
it. "At another point I got one of Hollywood's most prominent
fortune-tellers on my back. He advised everyone to stay away
from me because I only brought misfortune . Later on it turned
out that he was against me because I had purchased an
antique Chinese figure that he himself had wanted to buy."46
Christensen seems to have been a defiant figure at MGM
and it no doubt irked some that a foreigner who could hardly
speak English47 could lay claim to knowing the tastes of the
American movie-going public better than his bosses at the
studio , even if he had had success 41 the country with previous
films . On the other hand it must have b een hard for
Christensen to submit one story idea after another only to be
asked in deeply sceptical tones if he thought this was
something 'the American farmer' would go for - and then be
told to forget about it as fast as possible. He was getting a
crash course in hardball, bottom-line American capitalism.
But he himself was a battle-tested salesman, having
schlepped potatoes, champagne and even his own early films .
Even as MOM's writers were hacking apart The Light Eternal, he was exhaustively studying American movie-going habits ,
watching innumerable films and gauging audience reaction.
Harry Rapf himself had to concede that he had gained "a better
conception of those things than some domestic directors . "48
Tl·
Still it was something of a pitiable s ituation. The Witch had been a triumph of one man's vision, the product of obsess ion and the refusal to compromise, and now the s ame director was slavishly attempting to cater to 'the American farmer', no les s . What Chris tensen might have achieved had he been encouraged to s tay in Denmark and been given creative freedom on his pictures would occas ion much s oulsearching in Danish film circles in the decades to come. Truth be told, however, Denmark was too s mall to accommodate his grand ambitions (or ego) and Danish studios were incapable of producing the world-class epics that he could only make in Hollywood .
. . . An epic like The Mysterious Island, which was to be his next project. This was a loose adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, which MGM was prepared to dump a vast amount of effort and resources into. He took over the picture from Maurice Tourneur o n short notice in the s ummer of 1 926
after the French emigre had been frred by Mayer for objecting to the presence of a producer on the s et who was constantly looking over his shoulder. By this point the s tudio had already sunk cons iderable sums into the film and Christensen proceeded to further drain their coffers by s pending 300 , 000
dollars on the construction of a pool where the underwater photography for the p rologue would take place. 49
He threw himself into the production, directing during the day and feverishly rewriting the script at night, twice calling a halt to filming to work out s tory problems .so B ut bad luck s truck again when a hurricane hit the B ahamas where location shooting was taking place, destroying the underwater s ets and s econd unit equipment. The film was temporarily shut down and Chr istensen was g iven new assignments .
Lucien Hubbard eventually took
over the picture . He largely recast
it and had it ready for release in
1 929 . A writer later remarked
that in his years at MGM
Christensen had only managed
to direct "two movies and one
prologu e , " yet Arne Lunde
suggests that Christensen's
influence can be seen in more
than just the opening: " . . . one
torture scene of the young heroine
suggests the macabre imagination of
the director of Hiixan . Silhouetted
lighting in a submarine interior
shot also shows traces of a key
Christensen stylistic signature."51
Suffice it to say, Christensen's involvement with the film
did nothing to help him shed his reputation as a squanderer of
time and money.
With his next picture , Mockery , there seems to be some
indication that MGM gave him a freer hand: it was based on his
own original screenplay which the studio meddled with less
than usual , and they gave him his own name back, billing it as
a 'Benjamin Christensen production' rather than
'Christianson . '
A romantic adventure set during the Russian revolution , it
starred Lon Chaney as the simple-minded peasant , Sergei . He
meets a poor woman in the woods but she is really the
Countess Tatiana in disguise, fleeing an unthinkable fate at
the hands of marauding Red soldiers . He agrees to escort her
through enemy territory by pretending to be her husband, but
above: A scene from Mockery. opposite : Benjamin Christensen as he appeared at his peak in Hollywood.
the ruse fails and they're captured by Bolsheviks . Sergei is
tortured but refuses to reveal Tatiana's secret identity .
Eventually they are saved by the dashing Dimitri (played by
Ricardo Cortez) who commands a White Russian cavalry unit,
and as a reward for his heroism Sergei is made a servant in the
house of a wealthy war profiteer.
Tatiana and Dimitri fall in love while Sergei looks on with
bitterness. He feels the noblewoman is looking down her nose
at him. During a peasant uprising he attempts to rape her,
drunk on liquor and Bolshevik propaganda. The revolt is put
down by Dimitri and his troops. Sergei is however spared when
(! J : ((
Tatiana swears that he had actually protected her. Soon
another uprising occurs and Tatiana is again in mortal danger,
but this time Sergei, now bound by eternal gratitude, lays
down his llie defending her.
The movie was energetically promoted. "B enj amin
Christensen, " touted the studio , "is one of the world's greatest
authorities on the psychological effect of light and shade in the
drama." The film's "many strange effects . . . worked out on the
screen for the first time" constituted a "blending of American
and European methods . "52
Released in August 1 927 , it suffered an only slightly more
mercllu.l fate at the hands of critics than Sergei had at the
hands of his attackers . Its setting, they claimed, lacked
credibility. It's easy to see why: it had obviously been shot in
Southern California, not Russia, and that was evident in
almost every frame. Cortez's Latin appearance struck another
off-key note .
Christensen's big mistake , however, was to cast Lon
Chaney in a sympathetic role . Through a series of films like
The Hunchback of Notre Dame , The Phantom of the Opera and
Tad Browning's The Unholy Three , he had cultivated a sinister
and sadistic persona which had won him adulation and given
rise to a popular saying of the time : "Don't step on that spider
- it could be Lon Chaney! " Viewers now had a hard time
accepting him as a devoted and suffering victim. And though
some critics praised the subtlety of his performance , 'the
farmers of America' were up in arms about it, and according
to John Ernst , "they s ent threatening letters by the
thousands to MGM. "53
The failure of Mockery was another nail in Christensen's
coffin as far as the studio was concerned, and it's no surprise
that when he later approached them about terminating his
contract they could be persuaded. He thought he could do
better at another studio , and in March 1 9 28 he signed on with
First National Pictures to make a single film. He would work
ill collaboration with his good friend, the author and critic Wid
Gunning whom he'd first met in 1 9 1 6 in New York while
negotiating the rights to Blind Justice. It was Gunning who
penned the original story upon which this film, The Hawk's Nest, was based.
The two of them had assembled a crack outfit that
counted, among other able technicians , cameraman Sol Polito
who would later go on to work with directors such as Michael
Curtiz and Mervyn LeRoy, and they had the studio's biggest
star, Milton Sills , at their disposal. Nevertheless this was a
considerably less prestigious studio than MGM and The Hawk's Nest was what was known as a 'progr ammer, ' a kind of
B-movie. So be it. From all evidence Christensen was happy
enough. And the story, set in the mysterious urban catacombs
of Chinatown where shadowy characters app eared and
vanished at will, allowed him to indulge in the kind of Gothic
atmosphere of which he was so fond.
This was the shadowy domain of 'The Hawk, ' a disfigured
war veteran who runs a nightclub . Nearby is another
neighbourhood hot-spot run by the gangster Dan Daugherty.
In a diabolical twist the Hawk's best friend is framed by Dan
for a murder he actually committed, and an innocent man is
sentenced to the electric chair. The Hawk avails himself of
plastic surgery and now, armed with a new face and identity,
he proceeds to frighten the guilty party into confessing.
A review on 5 December, 1 928 , in The Los Angeles Record ---
said in part that, "the direction of B enjamin Christensen is
worthy of considerable comment due to the fact that he
assumed a particularly mysterious style in handling his
77
characters . Odd [camera) angles are much in evidence , and
for the first time it seems that Sills is listening to a director
who has ideas . "
The film was something o f a hit and over the course of
1928 and 1929 Christensen and Gunning made three more
movies with First National (which in the meantime was
purchased by Warner Brothers) , the Dane reinventing himself
now as the can-do , go-getting 'B en' Christensen, apparently in
an attempt to dispel reports that he was unproductive, slow
and somehow 'old world. '54
In 1927 Paul Leni had huge success with The Cat and the Canary , a 'mystery I comedy, ' and Christensen now attempted
to exploit the success of this popular new genre with a picture
entitled The Haunted House . Here someone is trying to poison
an elderly millionaire. Suspecting that it might be one of his
heirs, he lures four of them to his seaside mansion by letting
slip that half-a-million dollars is hidden there. Soon after
arriving they begin to encounter a series of strange characters
that include a beautiful sleepwalking woman, an insane doctor,
his bevvitched nurse and the inscrutable care�er-of the place.
They're all frightened out of their minds and the would-be
poisoner is revealed.
Christensen and Polito had used low- angle shots and
inventive lighting to splendid effect while the performances of
Flora Finch, Chester Conklin and Thelma Todd, who stayed
on board for the rest of their First National comedies , won the
hearts of audiences and ensured the film's succes s . And
critics were kind enough, although nob o dy accused the film
of attempting anything new . It was released in b oth a silent
and sound version, the latter b oasting audio effects that
included slamming doors , gun shots , storm nois es , groans
and rattling chains .
Its success demanded a
follow-up and that was to be
Seven Footprints to Satan
( 1 929), the only one of these
First National films to survive ,
a print having miraculously
resurfaced in the '60s. Like
The Haunted House, this film
was based on a novel (by
Abraham Merritt ) . though
Christensen found himself
compelled to largely re-write
the stories for the screen ,
working in both instances
under the pseudonym of
Richard Bee.
Seven Footprints to Satan was concerned with subj ects
Christensen knew about: superstition and Hollywood . The plot
centres on Jim , a wealthy young man who imagines himself a
great explorer. Together with his girlfriend Eve he plans a
dangerous three-year excursion to the wilds of Africa; all of this
against his uncle's will . But before they can depart they are
kidnapped by unknown parties and taken to a mysterious
mansion where a black-hooded figure called Satan presides.
Here they are confronted by a procession of strange characters
that include a bearded dwarf. a grotesque cripple , a sexy witch ,
a gorilla and what appears t o be a werewolf. They witness
shootings , whippings and so forth while hands clutch out at
them and wall panels slide away to reveal secret rooms .
Nudity and orgies are also implied in a scene involving
hooded men and unhooded women engaged in some kind of
medieval-looking ritual ( drawing comparisons to Kubrick's
/9
Eyes Wide Shut) and who lie about on the floor :in formal dress .
A nude oriental woman is partially glimpsed :in one short
scene, a gorilla hold:ing her feet while her wrists are tied above
her head with leather straps . Variety described the film as
" . . . unquestionably one of the hottest exhibitions of :inequity
done :in a long while . . . no picture for kids . "55
At the end of the film it all turns out to have been a ruse
stage-managed by Jim's uncle to keep them from go:ing to
Africa (a premise and plot uncannily similar to the 1 9 9 7 David
F:incher film, The Game , that starred Michael Douglas . )
As both The Witch and Seven Footprints to Satan deal with
superstition, contain racy scenes and make the most of spooky
atmospherics , parallels are :inevitably drawn. Although Variety had reviewed The Witch on 30 August, 1 923 , and called it
"wonderful, " it also deemed it "absolutely unfit for public
exhibition. " At that po:int :in time The Witch had not even been
released :in America, and it wouldn't be until much later, and
then only :in a heavily""'�ensored version. (There is some
confusion as to when the film actually opened :in America. 2 7
May, 1 929 is given as the date by some sources , while others
say it was released :in March 1 930 , and still other sources
contend it premiered :in 1932 . Probably it had a limited early
release :in New York and 're-releases' elsewhere . )
There was some debate as t o which B enjamin Christensen
was pull:ing the str:ings :in Seven Footprints to Satan. Was this the work of the sober -m:inded rationalist who took a dispas
sionate delight :in reveal:ing all this mystical hocus-pocus to be
but the end product of human superstition, or were these
simply the lurid excesses of the sleaze merchant that certain
writers claimed to have caught not so fleeting glimpses of?
The prom:inent Danish critic Ib Monty subscribed to the first
l:ine of th:ink:ing, convinced that Christensen was ridicul:ing
Cast and crew of Sellen Fo o tprints to Satan: Christensen jar right, lower.
those predisposed to superstition (and perhaps also poking
fun at the rubes of Hollywood who dwelt in a hopelessly
provincial America) . 56
From a technical standpoint Christensen had once again
shown that he was able to deliver chills and spills on a
minuscule budget. He was also - as he had demonstrated in
The Witch and other films - aware that actors who were
immersed in their characters and fully understood the signifi
cance of their exchanges gave the best performances . And this
very much involved sound - even in silent movies . In his early
THELMA TODD and CREIGHTON HALE
silent films actors still
memorized and spoke scripted
dialogue, and in these films
viewers can often 'see ' the
sound even if they can't
actually hear it . For example in
Bl ind Jus tice a group of
merrymakers listen keenly to
the strokes of a clock as
midnight arrives on New Year's
Eve , while in The Witch the
deranged mutterings of an
elderly Maren Pedersen are
perhaps even more affecting
because we can only see her
lips move .
During the shooting of
Seven Footprints to Satan the
movie magazine Holly wood
noted how Christensen used
sound effects even on the set of
the silent version to motivate
his actors and create the
appropriate mood .57 These
sounds included gun shots , various types of bells , wailing
sirens , the grating of metal on metal , groans , moans , screams
and howls .ss Apparently he had found a better way to
communicate with his actors than in broken English - by
screaming at them! And these sessions reportedly left him
quite hoarse the next day.
The last of his First National films was House of Horror, the
tale of a terrified couple trapped in a haunted house with a
killer whom they attempt to elude in all sorts of humorous
ways . Again, the building features the slide-away paintings ,
secret entrances and trap doors that figured in the two
previous films , and the general premise is pretty much the
same even though the dialogue here was cut to the absolute
minimum.
Clearly Christensen was repeating himself and was not shy
about doing so . He would later state that he considered his first
two pictures with the studio , The Hawk's Nest and The Haunted House, the b est two films he made in America. Mter
I that it was a case of diminishing returns , although it must be
said that Seven Footprints to Satan holds up well today. It's
extremely entertaining and is much more than just another
run-of-the-mill haunted house comedy as some writers have
stated, probably without actually having seen it .
While House of Horror was not among Christensen's
favourites , it did lead to the discovery of a device that would
change the>.G� of filmmaking - the sound boom, if his
somewhat shifting (and never independently verified) recollec
tions of the event are credible .
As he recalled in an interview in 1 952 : "At the start [ of the
sound era] the microphone was firmly secured, forcing the
actors to move themselves in relation to it rather than the other
way around. I found that to b e exceedingly impractical, so
during a pause between two takes I sent a man out to find a
long bamboo (fishing) pole . We hung the microphone up on the
pole and I called over the little comedian, Chester Conklin, and
told him , 'now run around the studio , Ches' , and just say some
stuff and ignore the fact that you're b eing pursued by the
microphone. And it worked, disproving the nonsense that the
microphone must remain stationary. . . a week later the
'discovery' was being used in all the Hollywood studios . "59
"'lfter making House of Horror Christensen returned to
�Denmark for the first time since he'd departed for
Hollywood in 1925 . On 27 March, 1 929 , his ship docked in
Copenhagen, and the next day a reporter from a Danish paper
caught up with him to hear about his great adventures :
Benjamin Christensen came home yesterday from Hollywood and went trundling about in the Spring sunshine, an imposing and good-humouredfigure among the crowds on Str¢get. He is here on vacation. In recent years he has made four films for First National Studio, one of them with Milton Sills and one a 'talkie, ' and now he thinks that's enoughfor a while.
Q: How long are we going to be able to keep you over here? A month or two. Over the course of time a lot of Danes have
--..........,_ ended up over there and have established their own little colony . It's quite cozy and we often get together.
Q: Are you yourself satisfied? I am happy. Very simply put, I'm happy with my work.. And
you know that the last half year has been the most interesting in the whole history of film!
Q: Why? Because of sound film. I myself directed one and I was as
delighted as a child at Christmas who gets a really, really entertaining toy to play with . [ Christensen did indeed 'play'
around with sound. In one of his first sound films he had a
woman with a very beautiful voice singing a sentimental song
by Stephen Foster while at the same time a dog howled in the
most frightful manner. 6o -ed. ]
Q: What does a sound film demand of a director? He needs to have experience from bothfilm and live theatre.
It is in a way very complicated and demands a great sense of fantasy. It's not enough to throw out a good idea and just go from there.
Q : How does one shoot a soundfilm? We use lots of microphones. For a radio broadcast you can
use just one but when shooting a film you have them hanging all over the set decorations and props. Every single set-up and person requires a microphone. And inside a booth s its a man known as a sound-mixer. That is a completely new job in the film profession. He sits in that booth and listens to all the s ignals coming out of these microphones, and then the director himself goes into the booth to make sure everything sounds right. These days it is not enough anymore if everything just looks right.
Q : And if the sound is badly recorded, is the film unusable? Well, we 're already able to play back the sound three
minutes after the scene is shot so we pretty much know immediately if it's successful. And the sound is often recorded miles away from flte�tudio itself. For example, when I recorded my soundfilmfor First National the sound was sent to us through the telephone lines . . .
Christensen also had some business to attend to in
Copenhagen regarding the 1 , 500-seat Park Theatre which the
govermnent had granted him co-ownership of back in 1 925 .61
The theatre was newly built and hadn't actually opened until
October 1 92 6 , approximately a year after Christensen's
departure to the States . The problem was that he had been in
the US the whole time and had yet to step foot inside the
building despite earning tidy sums from it. He hadn't even
attended the grand opening, not least because the invitation,
'G/Ilfl'ter �eve:tl
sent by regular post, hadn't reached Wm in Hollywood until
four days after the event had taken place.
This failed to mollify critics who complained about the
situation on the floor of the Parliament, and he was now
compelled to defend Wmself in that hallowed hall. While it was
pointed out by at least one journalist that his contract had
taken all this into account, he was nevertheless forced to
relinquish his share of the enterprise . (The building still exists
today, located next to the Par ken sports stadium in the 0sterbro
neighbourhood, though it's been remodelled in such a fashion
that only the balcony remains intact as a functioning cinema. )
It took Wm longer than expected t o tie up all the loose
ends of his life in Denmark and he didn't make the voyage back
across the Atlantic until 1 930 . He had now been gone a full
year and it was a very different Hollywood he came back to - a
town and a film industry badly rattled by the Great Depression.
Lock-outs and strikes were now commonplace. And, as he
would later reflect with some bitterness , a whole flock of
Broadway directors who knew little about film had come out to
Hollywood in the wake of the 'talkie' boom to occupy all the
vacant directing jobs .
He had been gone too long, nobody knew him anymore.
And in the meantime many of the Scandinavian film people -
directors , actors , technicians - that he had fraternized with
had returned home. Christensen now also left Hollywood,
moving into a cottage on Santa Monica's Venice Beach. It was
a house he would describe as being "so close to the water that
one can almost roll out of bed and into the sea. " But he still
had big plans and Hollywood was still the key to his dreams .
His main ambition at this point was to start an
independent production company ·with his old pal, Wid
Gunning. One of their first projects was to be a film based on
the Danish novel, Street of the Sandalmakers, 62 which he had
acquired the rights to . As he enthused to a writer from B.T. in
1 9 3 2 , it was to be an ambitious historical epic made for the
international market. Set in ancient Rome, it would feature the
excitement and pageantry of pagan festivals and star
multitudes of slaves and legionnaires . He later claimed that
contracts had already been signed with theatres even before
they'd shot a single metre of film,63 all on the assumption that President Roosevelt's soon to be enacted film code would make
life easier for independent producers by outlawing the monopo
listic policies of the major studios (who forced theatres to book
their product on a 'package deal' basis ) . But to the surprise of many the new code simply gave 'the majors' a green light to
continue as before . This spelled doom for a whole generation of
independent producers , Christensen among them. He had
survived employees dropping dead on him, the vindictiveness
of angry fortune-tellers and hurricanes that wrecked his sets ,
but the greedy bottom-line politics of American big business was the final blow.
Another hindrance for Christensen would have been the
Production Code of 1 934, which stipulated in detail what was and was not permitted to be shown on screen. It was forced
down the throats of the studios by the Catholic Legion of
Decency in response to growing popular outrage over the
increasing 'decadence' of Hollywood movies and the immoral
dope-ravaged lifestyles - as the dim view would have it - of the
people who made them. Had that been implemented earlier, he
never would have gotten away with some of the scenes he'd
included in Seven Footprints to Satan, for example. American
movie making was about to become decidedly less daring, less
sexy and less weird, and it's hard to imagine Christensen being
. a part of that particular scene.
His years on Venice Beach remain a bit of a mystery.
Although he had a house by the sea (so typically Danish) , it
apparently wasn't enough to fend off bouts of homesickness,
as illustrated by one of the few episodes from this period he
later deigned to recount to a writer: "I remember one night on
New Year's Eve back in the Thirties when I had some young
people visiting me in my beach house in Santa Monica. A
young American fellow suggested that we ought to all go out
into the water when the clock was a little past midnight, and
five minutes later we all lay there together in the surf. The
water was just as warm as it is here (in Denmark) in
September. That's all great but I can assure you that one
eventually becomes dead tired of California's climate . You can't
stand the sun after you've been there a couple of years .64 One
longs to feel a fine snow in one's face or to take a plunge in real
water on a December day. People in California fail to
experience the blessings of the changing seasons . They hardly
know what a real spring is . "65
Now in exile from his 'life in exile, ' it's natural to wonder
what effect these reversals of fortune had on him and what
kind of life he was living there on the beach. He was exceed
ingly circumspect about this period. When asked by a scribe
what he was up to at this point, his response seemed purposely
vague: "I go for a sWim, walk around, rest, enjoy life. "66
Could it have been that prosaic? Hollywood and its
environs attracted would-be starlets from all over the country
who dreamed of meeting just such a Hollywood director, and
he was after all estranged and half a world away from his wife
back in Denmark. Was he perhaps indulging in the kind of
decadent, bohemian lifestyle that the aforementioned New
Year's Eve episode so tenuously hints at? Midnight flings like
this out into the surf were at that point becoming staple
scenes ill exploitation cillema. The most famous such scene
takes place in the 1 9 3 6 Dwain Esper - directed drug
melodrama, Marihuana: Weed with Roots in HelL H;ere , after a
night of blowmg dope with randy male cohorts , a gaggle of
loose women decide to go skillny-dippillg on a stretch of sand
assumedly located not far from Christensen's own shack.
Fiction, yes , but . . .
Some of the short stories ill the semi-autobiographical
book, Hollywood Destines , he published later hillt at a foot
loose existence. In Koloratur, he describes a fiery young beauty
who goes skinny-dippillg with him ill the sea and whom he
sleeps with that night. (From a repressively religious home, she
goes on to become a Hollywood star) . In Hollywood Mysteries he meets an available young pretty after both of them burst out
in laughter at an Ape-and-the-Virgill movie and are compelled
to leave the theater.
Whether on not the film colony really was as corrupt and
decadent as the yellow press claimed can never be known, but
it was without a doubt a town full of temptations for those with
a name and connections , and Benjamin Christensen had all
that. He was , after all , a lover of life as well as the man who had
made The Witch. And yet other evidence (equally circumstantial) pamts the
picture of a fellow who was becommg a hermit. What was really
going on with Benjamill Christensen at this poillt is fated to
remam a mystery. Perhaps he was just nursillg his personal
doubts and frustrations in solitude, but he was ill any case
clearly becomillg a different person, and toward the end of this
period on Venice Beach he dropped out of sight. And when he
moved back to Denmark ill 1 935 nobody there was even aware
of the fact. The tabloid, B. T. , eventually got to the bottom of the
case ill their 30 June, 1 9 3 6 issue:
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BENJAMIN CHRISTENSEN?
That's the question film people ask each other whenever they get together.
Those of the young generation hardly even know his name, but we who have more years behind us have notforgotten The
Mysterious X, when rats crawled over the face of the villain, Spiro, or Blind Justice. Back then Danish films were not based on childish manuscripts as they are today . One demanded excitement and also a certain logicfrom the writer.
Christensen was probably the most important, albeit difficult, of all directors here in Denmark. He could make many mistakes, as for example with The Witch, but he never deg raded himself by making a predictab le b ird-brained comedy. He never compromised.
And once again the question hangs in the air, 'Whatever happened to Benjamin Christensen? '
An anonymous source who should know gave us this reply some time ago.
"He lives by the Pacific coast . in Santa Monica, outs ide Hollywood. There he s its and waits for one film mogul or another to make him an offer. He is too proud to offer his services directly . . . He must live up to his own expectatio ns . He works through the days, always busy on an ide a for a great or a strange film. He receives v is itors w ith re luctance . Passers-by should preferably take the long way around his inauspicious little house on the edge of the beach. He lets pushy friends know without beating around the bush that their presence is not wanted. He spends very little money and lives off what he has saved so as to be able to b ide his time until another chance comes along. A Danish housekeeper cooks his meals . "67
yo
That's what a very knowledgeable source told us, and that was also very much the truth - until about a year ago when Christensen disappeared from Hollywood and environs. No one, not even those jew who were in his confidence, knew what had become of him.
But today we can reveal the secret: Benjamin Christensen has for some time been living incognito in Copenhagen. He lives on Henrik Steffensvej # 9, at the corner of Grundtvigsvej, in a beautiful 4thjloor flat which he has imaginatively decorated in a Chinese motif. And yet even though his name and address do appear in the directory, no press or film people have thus jar seen anything of him as he only infrequently goes out, and attempts as jar as possible to remain anonymous . . . wearing dark glasses and with his collar turned up around his ears! And one does not gain admittance into his abode without banging the doorknocker in a kind of pre-arranged code. Christensen loves mysticism, and even on this quiet, prosaic s ide-street in Copenhagen's Frederiksberg neighbourhood he manages to live like Dr. Fu Manchu.
He never became good friends with Hollywood and the American film moguls . He was too big a man for them to slaughter. He was not capable of just saying 'Yes! Yes! Yes ! ' . . .
so now he 's back. "
It was a very different Benjamin Christensen that had
returned, and yet he was anything but a broken man. He had
great plans . The article continues :
Most recently he 's been working day and night on some big film ideas. He 's just dotted the 'I's ' and crossed the 'T's ' on some manuscripts which are jar more ambitious than the Danish norm and which could not possibly be produced here . Thus he intends
�1
to travel to London in the near future to discuss the possibil ities
with his friend from Hollywood days, Alexander Korda, an
important figure in the English film industry and a man who
believes and who has gotten others to believe that worthwhile
films can be made outs ide the US. Korda was likewise no great
success in Hollywood. . . he and Christensen have much in
common, first and foremost the fact that they have never
consciously underestimated the public.
Like so many of Christensen's plans , those with Korda never
bore fruit and he was fated to remain in Denmark and make
his next film there . He could forget about the great Roman
epics for the international market. Danish studios could not
manage spectacular productions and on top of it the industry
was in a state of severe contraction. And to make a film in
spoken Danish - now that all films were 'talkies' - was , it goes
almost without saying, no plus
on the world market. Although
in later years Christensen
would concede that there were
great advantages to be had in
working in one's native
language , this was a humbling
come - down and he did not
accept it without prote s t ,
criticizing in a series o f
editorials official state film and
tax policies that he considered
counterproductive .
Beryamin Christensen, 1936.
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·��e �itc� t illetJitJeb
�n 1936 Christensen secured the rights to the Danish novel
�Children of Divorce and worked it into a screenplay which
Nordisk Film Company produced in 1939 . This was to be the
first of three 'social problem' pictures that he would make for the
studio . These were movies based around contemporary issues
with an aim to prod the viewer's sense of moral responsibility
and stir debate, and they constituted his 'Danish comeback. '
Children of Divorce painted a grim picture of the egotism
and moral laxity of single parents and dramatized the negative
effects that such behaviour had on their teenage children. It's
hard to imagine a film more at odds with the 'perversity' of The Witch than this , but, as noted, a rationalist-humanist
dimension could be read into almost all of Christensen's earlier
work. So while these films marked a stylistic departure for him
they also heralded the re-emergence of the 'progressive
Benjamin Christensen' who had shown concern for the
unjustly imprisoned in Blind Justice and the victims of
hysterical persecution in The Witch. The film was a critical and public success , with some
reviewers hailing it as the best Danish sound film yet. 68 Still a
bit of a ham, Christensen appeared in a brief cameo as the
salty old skipper, disguised behind a beard and a cigar, and
firing off a single line in his limited English; "Get the hell out
of here! Hurry up ! "
He followed it up with The Child in 1 940 . Here a young
couple struggles with the torment of an unplanned pregnancy
Benjamin Christensen and author Leek Fischer.
and the resultant social ostracism. It was a bold examination
of another sensitive social topic , abortion , and was also
successful. Christensen was gaining (or rather re-gaining) a
reputation as a filmmaker of importance who took chances.
Come Home with Me was the final instalment of his 'social
issues trilogy. ' It dealt with an altruistic female attorney who
forms personal bonds with her troubled clients in an effort to
help them , while the one most in need of understanding is her
ne'er -do-well and all too imperfect husband. This touching and
intimate drama was more about the ambiguous divide between
true compassion and 'do-gooding' self-righteousness than
about social injustice in any broader sense . It was based on a
theatre piece by Leek Fisher. He had penned the screenplay for
The Child and did the same here. Christensen had very little
control over the script but still managed to coax the kind of
performances from acting greats Bodil Ipsen and Johannes
Meyer that would win him comparisons to Frank Capra and
Eugene O'Neill. 69
With these films for Nordisk, Christensen proved himself to
be a disciplined filmmaker who could deliver the goods on
schedule and on budget, a man who had reined-in his desire
to experiment and who could concentrate on story and acting,
albeit at the expense of atmosphere. The lighting in most of
these films , for example, is characteristic of standard studio
set-ups. In a purely technical sense, these films were more
akin to the 'assembly line work' he had always despised. That
great, groundbreaking work of personal obsession, The Witch, now seemed but a distant memory.
Not so distant, actually. All of a sudden in 1 94 1 , just as the
newly reinvented, politically-correct Benjamin Christensen was
taking bows and receiving absolution for past sins , that film
came back from the dead.
After its opening run The Witch had been shelved and
forgotten and was by this point considered a 'lost' film. Unlike
today, when video and digital copying technologies guarantee
the preservation of almost every movie on some format, this
was a time when the destruction of a single 35mm print could
mean the end of a film's existence. With no television exposure
possible and With 'theatrical revivals' still extremely rare, a film
that flopped rarely got a second chance and was often just
liquidated for its silver content or dumped in a shed
somewhere and left to crumble . The basic assumption was that
og skrevet om i Aarevis Film en, der kostede
l'._M!IJ!If 2 Millioner
Mestervcerket
i Film en medvirlrer : Poul Rnmert, Clara Pontoppidan,
Astrid Holm, lb Sch -nber,, Karen W inther, E l ith Pio, Alice 0. Fredericks, Aa,a H ertel
Maaske den d ristigste F i lm, der nogensinde er optaget - Et Filmdokument af Rang - Atla n t i c Fi l m
above and opposite: Admatsjor the 194 1 Danish re-release of The Witch. ''Heksen, the masterpiece which has been talked about and written aboutjor years. " reads the text on these ads. " . . . The film which cost two million kroner. . .
Maybe the most daring film ever shot. a film document of high s tatus. "
The Witch had suffered precisely this kind of fate . As a
journalist had previously speculated in the 28 December, 1 936
edition of Politiken , "It has been 15 years since The Witch was
made , and if a print could even be found at this point the
celluloid would shatter like glass . What audiences would think
about this film today will never be known . "
But the chief o f Denmark's Atlantic Film Company had
been searching high and low for the film and four years after
this pessimistic prediction he discovered a print lying in a
storage facility in Stockholm . It was ,
judging by the Danish film board
censorship stamp , the exact same print
that had screened at the premiere at
Palads Theatre on 7 November, 1 9 2 2 . By
a stroke of incredible luck it had been
preserved in glycerine and stored in
metal cans and was determined to be in
excellent condition .
It was brought back to Denmark for
a proper revival and was given an
advance screening on 2 1 November,
1 940 for a select group of cultural VIPs .
Improvised musical accompaniment was
provided at this sneak preview, which
Christensen was unable to attend .
On 3 March, 1 94 1 , the film began its
revival run at the Dagmar Theatre, with
all proceeds going to benefit the Danish
actor's guild. A new print had been struck for the occasion,
dubbed with a new musical score composed by Emil Reesen .
There had been some talk about re-editing the film and
making it shorter, and Christensen himself had his reservations ,
particularly concerning the concluding 'modern chapter. ' As has
been shown , this was the most frequently criticized part . It did
seem oddly disjointed in style and tone as well as somewhat
superfluous, and from a scientific perspective Christensen had
failed to bring the same enlightened sense of balance and
insight to his own time that he had bought to bear on the Middle
Ages . He was also reportedly less than thrilled with his own
hammed-up performance as the Devil and was aware that the
speeded up movements of the actors in some places marked the
movie as a product of the silent era in a manner that now
seemed passe. No matter - "The film must stand or fall on its
own," he stated in the press, and it was left untouched.
Christensen gave a talk before the Dagmar screening,
received a bouquet of flowers and was heartily applauded. The
city's press and public held their collective breath. Would The Witch hold up after all these years or prove an embarrassment
the way that so many silent-era films did, films that now
seemed unintentionally comic and ridiculous and which were
hard for the modern viewer to relate to .
One might also wonder how a film about hysterical ,
brainwashed crowds and the brutal persecution of a
scapegoated segment of the population went down at a time
when Denmark was occupied by the German army and
swastikas flapped from every other flagpole . These were
tumultuous days and the echoes of deeper issues reverberated
even in the normally isolated, escapist sanctum of the movie
theatre. Even films that apparently had nothing to do With the
War now assumed a political dimension. An example: The Harvest Is in Danger (Kornet er ifare) , a public service agricul
tural short from 1 944. This 9-minute film indirectly equated the
destructive effects beetles were having on the harvest With the
havoc Germans were wreaking on Denmark. The narrator uses
military terminology and closes by exhorting viewers to join the
fight against the destructive, parasitic beetle. "Denmark's
harvest is at stake!" he barks - an ever so minor variation of the
well known resistance slogan, "Your freedom is at stake!"
It would be hard to believe that the themes incarnate in
The Witch did not resonate in a similar manner With at least
some viewers . The Witch hysteria was contingent on travelling
tribunals of 'Witch hunters' who transformed the countryside
into a kind of fascistic police state , exactly as the Nazis had
transformed Europe. In both situations bribery and torture
was commonplace while suspects were administered loyalty
tests and the use of informers , who often had ulterior motives ,
was widespread. Speculation of this sort is absent from
contemporary discussions of the film in the press - no surprise
since the Nazis kept a close watch on the Danish media.
In any case , the re-launch was eagerly anticipated.
Everyone seemed to be aware of The New York Times's comment that The Witch was 25 years ahead of its time. Was
it? A couple of weeks previous a writer credited as Mr. Allevegne, who had already seen the film , attempted to answer
some of these questions . The following excerpt is taken from
Social Demokraten, 2 1 February, 1 94 1 :
THE FILM THAT WAS FAR AHEAD OF ITS TIME
The Witch was the first really b ig film that B e njamin Christensen directed. It cost a million Danish Kroner and preparations for the filming took several years. The shooting itself took place almost exactly twenty years ago.
Its revival is an event, if only because it is such an old film, and yet it's all the more interesting because upon its release the film was said to be 25 years ahead of its time. if that was true then it should be perfectly suited for showing today!
Was the Film Ahead of Its Time?
The other day I had the opportunity to see The Witch and must answer that question with both a yes and a no. Many of the pictures are, from a technical standpoint, so excellently made that they could hardly be improved upon today, but other parts, particularly the film's ending, seem a bit antiquated.
yy
The Witch is not a film in the normal sense. Christensen himself called it a cultural-historic lecture transformed into (moving) images and he intendedfirst andforemost to describe the gruesome persecution of witches and the causes behind it, such as the belief in demons and devils . We page through the old books on superstition and see images of witches that come to life . . . we see the torture instruments used on witches who cook love potions. This part is so masteifully and convincingly described, and with such effect, that a cold shiver runs down one 's spine when these images are shown again.
Are We Better Than We Were in the Middle Ages?
The section of the film that seems a bit antiquated is the last part where Christensen has had the otherwise excellent idea of taking the lecture further into 'the present day. ' He raises the question as to whether modern man is superior to his forebears of the Middle Ages who cultivated this belief in witchcraft. Don't we still consultfortune-tellers and soothsayers? Don't we read dream booTes and do the strangest things if a black cat crosses our path?
Then he leads us into a neurologist's waiting room where a woman suffers from a case of possession . . . this is the last scene and is not really credible when one knows just a bit of Freud. But when (the renowned) professor Viggo Christiansen has g iven the
film his stamp of approval we must also go along with it.
Will the Film Give Rise to Protests?
When itfirst came out thefilm gave occasion to forceful protests. A campaign was launched against it in the press and some demanded that the picture be taken off the screen immediately.
JOO
Christensen defended himself by claiming the support of men of science and asserted that those directing the attacks were not keep ing abreast of modern develop ments and currents of thinking. In the twenty years that have passed we 've become less prudish, but I believe that the film will again spark. discussion. There are scenes in it that are so strong that the average ticket-buyer will hardly be able to digest them, and the torture scenes in particular can have an urifortunate effect on morbid or obsessive individuals. But nothing is censored out of the film although it goes without saying that it will be
jorbiddenfor minors .
Ib Schf!Jnberg As a Gruesome and Sadistic Monk
There are also things in the film that today take a b it of the edge off the worst scenes . We see sequences from a torture chamber where the monks order the most appalling torments to be administered to a young woman. Then we recognize one of the monks. Isn't that him? Yes it is ! That's our own 'Ibberman' - Ib Sch¢nberg, who s its there behind the judg e 's desk. cruel and gruesome. Then we smile. The whole thing is probably not as bad as it appears or Ib Sch¢nberg would never have participated.
That was Sch¢nberg 's first film and on top of it he played a kind of a v illain70 . . . We see other now:famous actors as they looked then. Paul Reumert is a slender youngster . . . there 's also Albrecht Schmidt, Carlo Wieth, Clara Pontoppidan, Tara Teje (a Swede) and the dear, round Oscar Stribolt - and he was impossible to turn into a v illain. He plays a monk. with an appetite for life and a weakness for the charms of the fairer sex, and his appearance provokes a jubilant reaction in the audience.
101
The Lead Part Is Played By an Old Woman Who Sold Violets
In one respect Christensen was far ahead of his time. The Russians attempt to make films in which they use 'regular people ' who are pe-Tject 'types, ' rather than (professional) actors, and Christensen was doing that twenty years ago . The leading role is played by a little old mother figure, and her face is unforgettable. She wasn't an actress. Christensenfound her on the street selling violets . . . That this miserable old woman is accused of being a witch arouses sympathy in the audience.
The Film Re-discovered By Pure Accident
The Witch is scheduled to play at the Dagmar B io next week. when Niels Pind and His Boys is taken off and it will be exciting to see how the public reacts to the revival.
But whatever one can say for or against the film, it is indisputably a document of high standing. What's more, thefact that we even get to see it again is the result of an accident. When the film was taken off screens it ended up in the archive of the Swedish studio that produced it and was forgotten. It was found there a few months ago. After having languished for twenty years in an environment that wasn't good for film one might have feared that it was completely ruined, but in fact it was well preserved. Now hopefully they will take better care of it. Perhaps there will be more enjoyment to be gained from it in another twenty years.
This new print sported an introduction by Christensen wherein
he discusses the differences between silent and sound cinema,
and elaborates upon the four types of 'witches' that existed and
are represented in the movie.
10�
The Devil administers to his heathenjlock of witches by sacrificing a baby.
First there were the 'professional' witches . women who
practiced folk-magic and occasionally produced some kind of
result based either upon the (usually herbal ) concoctions they
cooked up or upon the fact that people simply believed their
remedies worked. Not all witchcraft could be put down to
superstition - sometimes results were produced! Second came
the disfigured old hags . reViled and unfortunate beggars and
outcasts who aroused suspicion and were easy targets . Then
there were the 'hysterical' women who through some mental
affliction were prone to exhibit suspicious symptoms or make
fantastic and deluded claims and charges . Finally there were
average middle-class women who were simply informed upon
and had confessions tortured out of them.
Public reaction to the re-launch was overwhelmingly
positive, no doubt in part because Christensen was now a
'respected' and 'important' director and because times had
indeed changed. Minor criticisms were voiced about his
constant use of the first-person form and the frequent
appearance of inter -texts , which some felt disrupted the
dramatic flow and hindered the actors from delivering fully
realized performances .71 But the public was in no mood to
quibble; over 24,800 people pushed through the turnstiles of
the Dagmar Theatre during the first week, setting a new house
record. This was no mouldy artefact of silent cinema.
Christensen's intricate staging and lighting set-ups and his
use of close-ups , shunned at the time as a technique that was
too graphic and almost indecent, gave his film dramatic
sophistication and visceral impact. Mter its run there it rolled
out to the smaller towns in the proVinces .
Mr. Allevegne's aforementioned prediction that the film
could have unfortunate effects on "morbid or obsessive
individuals" apparently came true in the town of Horsens that
fall as a 1 9 September, 1 94 1 article in the national daily
Ekstrabladet testified:
VIEWING OF THE WITCH CAUSES CRAMPS
The twenty-year-old Benjamin Christensen film, The Witch, is
currently being shown in Harsens where it is making a strong
impression on the public. Last night the police found a 23-year-old
man wandering the streets of town short of breath and with his
arms sti.ffly extended out infront of him. Atfirst it appeared he
was intoxicated but officers quickly determined that was not the
case. He was put into an ambulance and taken to Horsen's
County hospital where he was g iven artificial respiration and
held overnight before being released. According to information the
police received, his condition was caused by the movie, The
Witch. During some of thefilm's more intense scenes he became
hypnotized to such a degree that it caused him to develop cramps.
The reVival of The Witch also gave rise to the publication of a
book, Witchcraft and Superstition Throug h the Times. The
author, William Sieverts , was so influenced by the moVie that
almost the whole of Christensen's filmed prologue was
included in the book's introduction. Sieverts explored a range
of related historical phenomena that Christensen had not
touched upon, the ghastly crimes of Gilles de Rais among
them. Yet his conclusions , as one reViewer noted, could tend to
be a bit "far out" - like his contention that jazz music could be
equated to witchcraft. 72
Most interesting was his account of a witchcraft panic that
plagued K!Zige, a small harbour town south of Copenhagen,
where between 1 608 and 1 6 1 5 fifteen women were burned on
bonfires . It all started when one Hans Bartskjcer saw "a terrible
toad walking from a gate on two slender legs . " Bartskjcer had
probably been suffering a drunken delirium and had seen a
sick dog contorting its body, but everyone in his house was
terrified and became conVinced that a witch must have let the
monster loose. The first to attract suspicion was a woman who
had once wished Bartskjcer bad luck after a business
transaction between them had gone bad. The story of the K!Zige
hysteria was later published in Latin and became a great
popular success , and much later it formed the basis of a
"vaudeviller" called The Harridans of K¢ge (K¢ge Huskors ) .
JOfi
The revival of The Witch gave Christensen occasion to
weigh in on the sound-vs . - silent cinema debate . Like Charlie
Chaplin he remained a staunch advocate of the art of silent
cinema long after 'the talkies' had won out. He was asked if
he could imagine The Witch remade as a sound film : 73 "That
would naturally be impossible - how does the Devil talk, for
example? Silent films had many drawbacks b u t also
advantages . Sound film is objective ; everything is explained
through dialogue and they need not engage one's sense of
fantasy. Sound film completely lacks the illusion and poetry
of silent cinema; one cannot dream and fantasize further
about the adventure and the characters contained in the film .
Here we've lost a bit of ground and that is one of the most
important tasks sound
film has before it , to
recapture the lost
ground . I would like to
make another silent
movie if I could find
the right manuscript
for a film completely
without dialogu e , a
film where the images
alone engage one's
sense of fantasy and
set dreams in motion . "
Programme cover for a revival screening of The Witch in
Brussels in 1948.
ECRAN DU SEMINAIRE DES ARTS A. S. B. L.
PALAIS DES BEAUX-ARTS - BRUXELLES
S A I S O N 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 -1 9 DEUX/8MB SEANCE D'ABONNEMENT
*
BENJAM IN CHRISTENSEN
LA S O R C E L L E R I E A T R AV E R S L E S A G E S
(HAEXAN)
( 1 9 2 1 )
prid:de de TROIS FILMS EXPERIMENTAUX DANOIS
et suivi du DEUXIEME EPISODE de
T I H - M I N H de LOUIS FEUILLADE
LE M A R D I 2 N OV E M B R E 1 9 4 8
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l4t'hristensen never found another 'silent movie' script, but
�s next film , The Lady w ith the Light-Coloured Gloves , was
heavily inspired by silent cinema. Like The Mysterious X, it was
an attempt to make a spy thriller for the international market,
but Danish film now played a much more marginal role in the
global marketplace.
The social problem pictures had provided scant
opportunity for Christensen to indulge his passion for effects
and atmosphere and now he made up for lost time, employing
inventive camera angles , lighting effects , masks and other
post-production processes now available to him . The first reel
was packed with visual punch. But even here Christensen was
showing his age as the expressionist trappings he now
employed in a tribute to the evocativeness of silent cinema -
such as the long shadow of a pistol-clutching assassin - were
no longer powerful stuff. And the excitement pretty much
ended after the first spool, the film bogging down into a hard to
follow story about a murky series of double-crosses .
Set during the First World War, The Lady with the Light
Coloured Gloves tells the tale of Torben, a Danish engineer who
checks into a mysterious hotel carrying a secret letter that
later, in a neutral country, he is to pass on to the Czar's
personal emissary. But the hotel proves to be a hive of
criminals , shady swindlers and spies , and when his best friend,
a young Russian courier, is found dead the plot thickens .
It was apparently very loosely based on experiences
Christensen had when travelling through Europe to sell The
Mysterious X. Those had been exciting, adventurous times .
Momentous world events were unfolding around him as he
moved from country to country with a print of the film in his
trunk, meeting all kinds of colourful characters on the fly and
matching wits with border crossing guards and the like. As
John Ernst notes , 74 he himself was actually embroiled in a
minor intrigue when he was unwittingly duped into acting as a
courier for the Czar's secret police (though Ernst deems the
incident to have been the stuff of farce rather than high
drama) . And a similar story, entitled Film and Reality (Film og
Virkelighed) is contained in his book, Hollywood Destinies.
Here documents are secretly planted in his suitcase .
It was natural that Christensen would draw upon his own
experiences , but the film fell flat according to most critics .
Stereotypical characters were caught in absurd situations . The
actors seemed to be play-acting spies , clumsy ones at that. It
was as far behind its time as The Mysterious X had been ahead
of its , and - with the Nazis occupying Denmark and the
outcome of the War still very much in doubt - it was badly out
of synch with present-day realities . At its premiere the
audience laughed in all the wrong places . 75 It was hopelessly
naive, its low-camp excesses reportedly the only thing to
recommend it to ticket-buyers looking for a reason to chuckle
in grim times . (Though at least one Danish film scholar claims
the movie was not nearly as bad as all that. 76)
It went down as one of the biggest fi.ascos in Danish film
history and must have been a huge blow to both Christensen,
who had spent a great amount of time, care and effort on it ,
and also to his studio . There were at least two more books he
wanted to film and he proposed these projects to Nordisk but
they turned him down. In 1 943 he wrote to a friend that he
now considered his relationship with the studio to be
terminated. 77
108
Mter The Lady with the Light-Coloured Gloves , the Danish
film industry was through with him and he eventually
accepted this too . In 1 945 he told a writer that he had no
intention of making another film, adding, "people here think
that the only kind of film I can make is one that has trolls and
witches in it . "7B Better that they remember the trolls and
witches than the bumbling spies .
Christensen continued to make his opinions heard in the
press , and in 1 945 published the previously referred to book
of short stories , Hollywood Destinies (Hollywood Skcebner) .
Spun from a mix of autobiography and fiction, these stories
are not all movie related but frequently elaborate upon
themes that he dealt with in his films and with experiences
he had while travelling around on film business .
The previous year h e had been granted a license to
operate another cinema, the 500-seat Rio Bio in the lower
middle class suburb of R�dovre - nothing so fancy as the
Park Theatre this time, but he was grateful enough. He was
getting on in years and this supplied him with a living income
and contact with the movie-going public which gave him
much pleasure. Not 'his' public , since he never exhibited his
own films (out of principle) , and not a sophisticated 'big city'
public, but just regular folks . He seemed to enjoy the j ob ,
particularly when the theatre was full of youngsters who
affectionately called the gangly, gaunt old fellow with the
round glasses "the movie man."
Otherwise he guarded his privacy jealously. He rarely
ventured out in public , preferring to stay home with Kamma in
their cozy Fredericksberg flat on Lindevangen, which was
crammed with the books and oriental antiques he had
collected over the years . Other great figures of Danish silent
cinema also called this quiet neighbourhood of stately stone
apartment buildings and leafy boulevards home ; Carl Dreyer
lived over on Dalgas Boulevard and Asta Nielsen around the
corner on Peter Bangs Vej .
The years wore on .
Every once in a while film people would again start asking,
'whatever happened to Benjamin Christensen?' And inevitably
journalists would find their way into the cluttered sanctum of
his home to be regaled with stories of the old days . On one such
occasion a photographer got him to proudly pose beside a
treasured collectable ; a thousand-year -old engraved Chinese
tombstone . He would laugh off the inevitable inquiries as to how
a world famous movie director who had 'conquered' Hollywood
could find contentment running a neighbourhood cinema in
humble R0dovre . He seemed a man at peace with himself and
reconciled to the circumstances that fate had dealt him.
On 2 April , 1 95 9 , at the age of 7 9 , he passed away after a
lengthy illness.
'The Master' whose visage
had adorned countless movie
posters and glared out from
screens all over the world had
gone on to make an art form
out of anonymity, and he was
- as he requested - buried in
an unmarked grave in
S0ndermark cemetery in
Copenhagen after a small
ceremony that was conducted
virtually in secret.
Christensen shows off an ancient
Chinese gravestone.
�he Witch, Benjamin Christensen's most enduring and
"-'significant achievement, would be subject to periodic
revivals after his passing.
The Danish Film Museum, for example , staged an
ambitious retrospective in 1 9 6 7 , screening all the films which
(at the time) could be located, and this gave occasion for John
Ernst's penetrating study which was , prior to this book, the
only work that had been published (thus far in Danish only)
on him.
The following year the film was condensed down to 76
minutes and 're-mixed' by the English filmmaker and
programmer, Antony Balch. Balch was a connoisseur of edgy
and transgressive cinema and brought many important and
previously banned films to British screens , including Freaks. He consorted With the likes of Brion Gysin and other high
priests of Beat, such as William Burroughs who was liVing in
London at the time. He was involved in several film projects
'vith Burroughs and got him to do the narration for this new
version, entitled Witchcraft Through the Ages. He also added
music composed and performed by percussionist Daniel
Humair and violinist Jean-Luc Panty and other musicians .
In November 1 968 this version played at London's Baker
Street cinema (slapped With British Board of Film Censors 'X' certificate) , sparking a revival of sorts for the film in the UK and
earning it countless new fans , despite the fact that at least one
critic found the narration to be "rather dully spoken and at
times a little arch."79 Said unidentified critic also seems to
have misinterpreted the film in this version as he goes on to
111
reflect that, " . . . the conclusion (of the film) , that in the
enlightened Twenties 'Witches' were being kindly confined to
lunatic asylums or given therapeutic showers to cure their
'hysteria, ' appears only slightly less barbaric than burning
them at the stake . "
Christensen's message , that things have not really
changed all that much and that modern man, in supposed
possession of great amounts of Wisdom and enlightenment, is
still prey to superstition, was of course quite the opposite .
With that said, Christensen was of course basing his
assumptions on works available to him at the time and he cites
facts and figures then considered accurate . Some of this is
today contested by scholars . As previously noted, the
commonly quoted toll of eight million deaths is today
considered way off, and the role that Witch hunters played in
spreading the terror has also been called into question, With
some maintaining that 'regular people' were far more respon
sible for provoking the persecutions . Doubt has also been cast
upon the ordeal of trial-by-water, which in popular accounts
would always seem to lead to the death of the accused woman.
(If she floated she was a Witch, if she sank and drowned she
was innocent . ) According to some historians the women who
sank were often pulled up in time .
He also fails to directly address claims that persecuted
'witches' were frequently first and foremost victims of economic
and/ or sexual exploitation. This view is Widely accepted today,
and in the realm of popular cinema is best represented in the
British film from 1968, Michael Reeves's Witcllfinder General.
While Christensen doesn't directly contend that Witch hunters
and priests exploited women sexually, he really doesn't need to .
The scenes in his film of voyeuristic priests spying on accused
women as they are brutally interrogated - and often bound, caged
11:1.
above : Interrogators prick a woman 'sflesh to
probe for insensitive spots that will prove she is
in league with the devil.
right : Woodcut of naked woman hog-tied.
and / or unclothed - say enough about
the sadistic sexual dynamics involved. At
one point a woman naked from the waist
up and seen from behind has instruments of torture applied to
her bare flesh. There is also the woodcut, shown more than once,
of a naked woman hog-tied on her back and enduring trial-by
water. Female bodies had to be searched for suspicious marks
and insensitive spots , and first those bodies had to be unclothed .
The Witch had caught the spirit of the times and in 1 968
the film was also revived in Paris , Stockholm and Copenhagen,
where Peter Refn scheduled a run at his Camera Bio . A new
print was struck, fittingly at the Johan Ankerstjerne film lab ,
without the dubbed music this time as had been the case in
1 941 . That was now considered to have been a mistake. so This
print would be as true to Christensen's version as possible ,
accompanied by the original music score , which was played at
the opening show on 3 1 May by pianist Kay Kilian. Refn's
revival of the film reaped it lots of praise but not all reviewers
were positive: " . . . not a good film, succeeds today only as
camp;"BI "Seen from a modern perspective the film resembles
an entertaining museum exhibit. "B2
In February 1970 the Elgin, New York's legendary repertory
theater, double-billed the Balch version of The Witch with Wild
Horses by Sergei Parajanov and drew the wrath of underground
film spokesman, Jonas Mekas , who in his 'Movie Journal'
column in the 12 February edition of The Village Voice wrote:
Do not miss the Elgin Theater double-bill opening this week of
Haxan and Wild Horses. . . Haxan was made by Benjamin
Christensen in 1 922 in Denmark. The film uses old engravings
and period re-enactments to present the history of witchcraft. I saw the film years ago at (Amos Vogel 's) Cinema 1 6. I still can't
forget the strength of some of the images, the imagination that
went into them. I urge you to see the film despite one unfortunate
fact: the version which you 'll see is the bastardized "English
version" prepared by a well meaning but obviously stupid young
man, Antony Balch. It takes stupidity to do what he did with this
greatfilm. To a beautiful s ilentfilm he added ajazz score and a
squeaking narration by William Burroughs. The texts, which in
the original film appear as titles, as part of the film's structure,
11f
now most of the time are read by Burroughs. Thefilm has been
destroyed. Nevertheless, there is enough left of the original
power of the images - particularly if you can keep your ears
plugged somehow. Why did Burroughs participate in this
barbarous act? Suppose we begin to mess with his novels, I
wonder how he 'dfeel about it. . . "
Others apparently agree with Mekas . For example when the
George Eastman House :in Rochester, NY played this version :in
2004, they turned down the sound and had live piano
accompaniment :instead.
In fact the B alch /Burroughs version, which was
distributed :in the U.S . by Janus Films (who apparently
distributed both versions) , is not all that bad. The music , an
atmospheric mix of jazz and avant-garde, is usually quite
effective if at times a bit overwhelm:ing. Burroughs's narration
injects :in spots a note of irony and dry humour after his
fashion. That is someth:ing the orig:inal version lacks , though
the appropriateness of that can certa:inly be argued.
Condensed to 75 m:inutes from its orig:inal 1 04-m:inute
runn:ing time, the Balch/Burroughs version unfortunately
gives short shift to some key scenes , :includ:ing the witches'
flight to Bloksbjerg and the nuns' hysteria :in the church. Some
torture scenes are shortened, it is less unrelent:ing, less
'brutal, ' but Burroughs's spoken dialogue gives it a more
unified (if still disjo:inted) narrative flow, or at least the feel:ing
of such. It is less clinical, less pedagogic , and the chapterized
structure is completely gone , although that'never really helped
to give Christensen's original version much cont:inuity. His film
was :in essence an episodic jumble of dreams , halluc:inations ,
dramatic skits and almost scientific presentations of devices or
concepts that lacked a focused narrative thread or perspective,
11/j"
Press book cover for the 1 968 British re-release of The Witch .
j j ,_-
and the Viewer cannot always be sure of what point-of-View
applies . The Balch/Burroughs version is more political , more
anti-authoritarian, more 'beat , ' as one might expect. In one
scene where Maria the weaversa is interrogated by two witch
hunters , Burroughs laconically observes : "here we see an
example of 'good cop /bad cop , ' which is still being practiced in
police stations all over the world. "
After Viewing this version, Mekas's criticism seems perhaps
a bit too harsh. Can't a film be re-contextualized and re
interpreted? Must all art be fossilized in its original state? Is
any alteration vandalism? The question is particularly relevant
to this film since it has been re-interpreted so many times . It
should also be noted that Christensen had to structure his
(silent) version around title-plates . This was a necessity, not an
artistic choice . And finally, hadn't at least one critic back on
the occasion of the 1 94 1 reVival criticized the over -abundance
of inter -titles for hampering the performances?
Through the years the fllm has screened in many different
contexts : rock stars have appropriated scenes for their Videos
while avant-garde musicians and even performance artists
have used the film as a backdrop for their own creative expres
sions . In 1995 , for example , a touring "Loud Music Silent Film
Festival" screened it as part of a performance by Judith Ren
Lay. As the program text reads : "Judith Ren-Lay is one of the
foremost performance artists on the scene today. Her
background is in dance, but it is her voice and incredibly
powerful performances that make her 'live painting' style so
memorable. She will be joined by sculptor and multi-instru
mentalist, Ken Butler, for these shows . The film she will be
working with, Witchcraft Through the Ages , is an early surrealist
film from the Swedish [sic] filmmaker, Benjamin Christensen
( 1 922) . This controversial look into the superstitious Medieval
mind was banned for years due to nudity and religious
irreverence. The bizarre cast of characters seems to have
marched right out of a Hieronymous Bosch painting. "
In 1996 in its capacity as European Cultural Capital of the
year, Copenhagen was flush with money to spend on the arts
and among the scheduled attractions was a screening of The
Witch set to a musical score composed specifically for the event
by the renowned French avant-garde art rock quintet, Art
Zoyd, who also played their pre-existing scores to Nosferatu
( 1 922) and Faust ( 1 926) .
In 1999 a conglomerate of Danish and American cultural
institutions organized a series of Danish art exhibitions and
performances in America under the banner of "The Danish
Wave." The cinema segment was entitled "Heart of Light: The
Danish Wave in Cinema, " and focused largely on the Dogme95
movement but also included a 12 -f:ilin retrospective dedicated to
Benjamin Christensen. Both the 'Burroughs version' and the
original (fully restored and tinted) versions were screened.
Many other screenings of the film have occurred in various
circumstances and contexts all over the world and down
through the years , far too many to mention here. It is a film
destined to be continually revived and rediscovered. Rather
than just being 25 years ahead of its time it seems to be eternal.
In Benjamin Christensen's hometown of Viborg there exists
no memorial to mark his memory, and where his father's
drapery shop once stood on the main town square today
stands a Blockbuster Video outlet.
But Christensen did finally get a memorial of sorts ; when
the folks behind The Blair Witch Project were working on their
film and watching every 'witch movie' they could get their hands
on, they stumbled across The Witch and were so amazed that
they named their production company after it - Haxan Films .
iJuutnutes
1 . Social Demokraten, 2 5 September, 1 949 2 . John Ernst, B enjamin Christensen [ 1 9 6 7 , The D anish Film Institute, Copenhagen) p. 7 3 . Berlingske iiftenavis , 3 0 June, 1 9 3 6
4 . Ibid 5 . Politilcen, 2 8 December, 1 9 3 6 6 . National Tidende , 2 6 September, 1 95 4 7 . Ibid 8 . Berlingske Tidende , 7 October, 1 9 9 9 9 . 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 1 8 i s roughly considered t o be Denmark's golden age o f silent
cinema when their fJl.ms attained a mastery and exportability that exceeded those
of the Americans and was surpassed only by the French. 1 0 . K¢benhavn, 24 March, 1 9 1 4 1 1 . Moving Picture World, March, 1 9 1 4 1 2 . Politilcen, 28 December, 1 9 3 6 1 3 . National Tidende , 2 6 September, 1 954 1 4 . Social Demokraten, 25 September, 1 9 49 1 5 . National Tidende , 2 6 September, 1 95 4
1 6 . The fJl.m's Swedish title, Hiixan, and the Danish title, Heksen, both literally translate into The Witch. In English the film has been known as Witch, The Witch and most commonly as Witchcraft Through the Ages (although technically that is the title of the version re-edited in 1 9 67). For our purposes we refer to it as The Witch. 1 7 . Berlingske Aftenavis , 30 June, 1 9 3 6 1 8 . 'Strong John' in the U S version. 1 9 . John Ernst, Benjamin Christensen ( 1 9 6 7 , The Danish Film Institute, Copenhagen) p . 1 0
20 . Berlingske Aftenavis , 3 0 June, 1 9 3 6 2 1 . Arhus Stiftstidende, 1 9 April, 1 9 5 9 2 2 . B enj amin Christensen, Hollywood S krebner [Hol lywood Destinies) (Copenhagen, 1 945 , Sch!1)nbergske Publishers). Note: His prison encounters were described in the stories I Sing Sing (In Sing Sing) and Helt Tilbunds (Getting Completely to the Bottom of the Case). 2 3 . National Tidende , 2 6 September, 1 95 4
2 4 . Ibid 2 5 . Still today in Denmark this longest summer night is celebrated all over the country with the burning of bonfires . In every bonfrre a stuffed 'witch' is placed on a pole and as she catches frre she takes to the air and 'flies' to Bloksbjerg. This is known as 'Sankt Hans aften' (Saint Hans night) and is the scene of much festivity and drinking.
:f'oot11oteof 1I.J
2 6 . Somewhere between 40 and 75 women were used as witches - reports vary.
2 7 . Undated article penned by Mogens Brandt from 1 9 4 1 . 2 8 . Account given b y Johan Ankerstjerne i n Randers Dagblad, 1 March, 1 9 4 1 .
2 9 . Unidentified daily, 1 7 February, 1 9 4 1 3 0 . Arhus Stijtstidende , 1 9 April, 1 9 5 9 3 1 . These reminiscences published in the 1 March, 1 9 4 1 issue o f B.T. , translated by the author. 3 2 . John Ernst, Benjamin Christensen ( 1 9 6 7 , The Danish Film Institute,
Copenhagen) p . 1 5 3 3 . Ibid, p . 1 7 34. K¢benhavn, 8 November, 1 9 22 3 5 . Social Demokraten, 25 September, 1 949
36. Politiken, 28 December, 1 9 3 6 3 7 . John Ernst, Benjamin Christen, p . 2 0
3 8 . Ibid, p . 2 1 3 9 . Unidentified Danish daily, 28 December, 1 9 23
40. Politiken, December 1923, The Herman Bang film, Michael by Julia Koppel.
4 1 . Casper Tyberg, Images of the Master - Benjamin Christensen's career in Denmark and Germany (published in 1 9 9 9 as part of the commemorative book Benjamin Christensen - An International Dane , issued in conjunction with a retrospective of Danish cinema in America). 42. Excerpted from Christensen's letter to Ove Brusendorf dated 25 March, 1 9 3 9 .
43. Ibid
44. Ekstrabladet, 24 September, 1 954 4 5 . John Ernst, Benjamin Christensen ( 1 9 6 7 , The Danish Film Institute,
Copenhagen) p . 24-25 46. Ibid
4 7. "I couldn't speak a word of English before I went to America," Christensen is quoted as saying in an article by Haagen Hetsch published in September 1 949 .
48. Motion Picture News, "Rapf Sees Era of Improvement, " 28 Novemb er, 1 9 2 5 . 49. John Ernst, Benjamin Christensen ( 1 9 6 7 , The Danish Film Institute,
Copenhagen) p.26 5 0 . Hollywood Citizen, 2 September, 1926 5 1 . Arne Lunde, Benjamin Christensen In Hollywood, p . 2 7 , issued as part of the
publication Benjamin Christensen, An International Dane (Published in 1 9 9 9 by "The Danish Wave 99" on the occasion of the exhibition of same name held at The
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 9-26 September, 1 9 9 9 . 5 2 . Quote culled from the 8-page MGM publicity flyer for Mockery o n fil e in- the Danish Film Institute, Copenhagen.
5 3 . John Ernst, Benjamin Christensen, ( 1 9 6 7 , The Danish Film Institute) p . 2 6 54. Arne Lund, Benjamin Christensen in Hollywood, p . 2 9 5 5 . Variety , 1 7 April, 1 9 29 56. Programme notes for Seven Footprints to Satan issued by The Danish Film
Museum in May 1 9 6 7 .
5 7 . It was almost compulsory at this time to releas e b oth a s ound and silent
version of a film. 5 8 . Hollywood, 1 5 December, 1 9 28
5 9 . Berlingske Aftenavis , 6 May, 1 9 5 2 6 0 . Social Demokraten, April 1 9 5 9
6 1 . This was a special favour granted t o certain directors b y the government as a kind of 'thank you . ' Carl Dreyer was granted, in the same fashion, operation of the Dagmar theatre in the '50s and his fmances improved considerably as a result. 62. Sandalmagernes gade by Nils Petersen. 6 3 . Politiken, 28 Decemb er, 1 9 3 6 6 4 . Having shot The Witch, Seven Footprints to Satan ( " . . . after a night's work
on the set." Arne Lund, p . 3 0 ) and perhaps other fJlms at night, Christensen was apparently no great sun worshipper. 6 5 . Unidentified Danish daily, 22 O ctober, 1 9 45
66. Berlingske Aftenavis , 18 D ecember, 1 9 3 4 6 7 . H e r name was Kamma Winther and he married h e r before returning t o Denmark.
6 8 . Berlingske Tidende /Politiken, 1 2 August, 1 9 3 9
6 9 . Arne Lund, Benjamin Christensen in Hollywood, p . 3 7 " . . . arguably b oth the wittiest and most moving of the three, resembling at moments a Danish fusion of Frank Capra (You Can't Take It w ith You) and Eugene O'Neill . " 7 0 . After his debut as a sadistic torturer i n The Witch he quickly became
typecast as a nice , fat, j olly chap _ and went on to b ecome one of Denmark's most beloved actors - the "funny, harmless man with a good heart" as Morton Pill characterizes him in his 2 0 0 1 b o ok ab out D anish actors , D anske Filmskuesp illere . 7 1 . Dansk Familie Blad, 28 March, 1 94 1 7 2 . Social Demokraten, 2 4 November, 1 9 4 1 7 3 . Unidentified Danish daily, 2 5 February, 1 9 4 1 74. John Ernst, Benjamin Christensen, p . 40 7 5 . Jyllands Posten, 4 April, 1 9 5 9 7 6 . Maren Pust 77. Morten Piil , Danish Film From A to Z, ( Gyldendal publishers , Copenhagen, 1 9 9 8 , 2000) p . 8 1 7 8 . Unidentified Danish daily, 2 2 O ctober, 1 945 ; America i s notjust Cars and Bank Accounts by Jonal. 7 9 . The Observer, 3 November, 1 9 6 8 8 0 . B.T. , 3 1 May, 1 9 6 8 8 1 . Jyllands Posten, 4 June, 1 9 6 8
8 2 . Information, 1 June, 1 9 6 8 , Pim 83. The character that Maren Pedersen plays in the film has b een variously
referred to as 'Maria the Weaver, ' 'Marie the Seamstress' and as simply 'The Witch, ' depending on which print of the film is viewed.
�enjtttnin rujri�ten�ett iJiltnngrtt��lJ
�ach film is listed under its English title, followed by the Danish (and/ or
� German) title in brackets . In the event that there exists no official English
title, or one cannot be found, an asterisk next to the title indicates it is a literal translation from Danish. Films that Christensen began but were never completed are also included.
THE BELT OF FATE*
(Sk<Ebneb<Eltet - D enmark) , 1 9 1 2 , Denmark Christensen acted as a blind musician. Produced by the D ansk Biografkompagni.
LITTLE CLAUS AND BIG CLAUS*
(Lille Klaus og store Klaus - Denmark) , 1 9 1 3 , Denmark Christensen performs as 'Big Klaus .' Produced in Denmark by the Dania Biofil:m Kompagni. References can also be found to other films from 1 9 1 3 also made by the Dania Biofil:m Kompagni. One is entitled THE CORRODI
SISTERS (S¢strene Corradi) and centres on two sisters who attempt to woo the same man. When one wins his love the other commits suicide. Christensen is listed as an actor (only) . The other is entitled CHILDREN OF THE STAGE*
(Scenens b¢rn) , and was directed by Bj¢rn Bj¢rnson with Christensen listed as an actor. Yet another film, WINGED*
[Vingeskudt) , in which Christensen plays a character named Rentier Palm, is credited to Dania Biofilm Kompagni, and was undoubt-edly made about the same time but no year of production is obtainable.
I:J.:l.
THE MYSTERIOUS X a.k.a. Orders Under Seal (Det hemmelig hedsfulde X - D enmark) , 1 9 1 3 , Denmark Christensen wrote, produced, directed and acted as the Navy Lieutenant van Hauen. Produced by Dansk Biografkompagni. (This film is not to b e confused with the 1 9 1 4 American film entitled Sealed Orders . )
T HE MAN WITHOUT A FACE*
(Manden uden ansigt - D enmark) , 1 9 1 5 , Denmark Christensen wrote, directed and was to produce this film, which was never fmished.
BLIND JUSTICE
a.k.a. Night of Revenge (H<Evnens nat Denmark) , 1 9 1 5 , Denmark Christensen wrote, directed and played the role of Strong Henry ('Strong John Sikes' in the US) . Produced by Dansk Biografkompagni.
THE WITCH
a . k . a . Witchcraft Through the Ag es [Hiixan - Sweden I Heksen - Denmark I La sorcellerie a travers les ages -France) , 1 9 2 2 , Shot in Denmark but
Benjamin Christensen. playing the Devil. spies on a praying nun in The Witch.
produced by a Swedish company.
Written and directed by Christensen.
who also starred as the main Devil .
Produced by Svenska Biografteatern .
(There i s also some indication that in
1 922 Christensen began work on his
planned follow-up to The Witch . The
Woman Saint (Helgeninde ) . which
however was quickly abandoned .
HIS MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURE (Seine Frau, Die Unbekannte I Wilbur
Crawjords wundersames Abenteuer -
Germany I Hvem er hans kone? -
Denmark}, 1 923. Germany
Directed by Christensen.
Produced by UFA. Sketchy references
can also be found to another German
film from 1 923 entitled Unter Juden
(Among Jews*) .
MICHAEL a.k .a . Chained I Chained: The Story of
the Third Sex I Heart's Desire (Mikael -
Germany) . 1 924, Germany
Christensen acted (only) in this film.
playing 'the master, Claude Zoret. ' It
was adapted for the screen by Carl
Theodor Dreyer and Thea von Harbou
after a novel by the Danish author.
Herman Bang. Produced by UFA and
filmed in Berlin.
THE WOMAN WHO DID
a.k.a. The Woman of nt-Repute (Die Frau mit dem schlecten Ruf -Germany) , 1 9 2 5 , Germany Christensen directed this Englishspoken film which was based on a novel by British author, Grant Allen
and produced by UFA.
THE DEVIL'S Cffi.CUS
a.k.a. The Light Eternal (working title) (Cirkusdjreuelen - Denmark) . 1 9 2 6 , USA Christensen directed and provided the idea, which was heavily worked over by multiple MGM scriptwriters in the
employ of the studio .
MOCKERY
a.k.a. Revolution I Terror (working title) , 1 9 2 7 , USA
Written and directed by Christensen.
Produced by MGM.
THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
1 9 26- 1 9 2 9 , USA Christensen was one of three directors
who worked on this film , which was completed by Lucien Hubb ard and
released in 1 9 2 9 . Produced by MGM.
THE HAWK'S NEST
(0rnens rede - Denmark), 1 9 2 8 , USA Directed by Christensen, produced by First National Pictures (Warner Brothers) . B ased on a story by Wid
Gunning.
THE HAUNTED HOUSE
(Sp¢gelser - Denmark), 1 92 8 , USA Directed and co-written by Christensen for First National Pictures (Warner Brothers) . Based on a play by Owen Davis.
1.2.f
SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN
(Syu fodtrin til heluede - Denmark) , 1 9 2 9 , USA Directed and adapted for the s creen by Christensen for First National Pictures (Warner Brothers) . B ased on a novel by Abraham Merritt.
HOUSE OF HORROR
(Rredslernes hus - Denmark) , 1 9 2 9 , USA Written and directed by Christensen for First National Pictures (Warner Brothers ) .
CHILDREN O F DIVORCE
(Skilsmissens b¢rn - Denmark) , 1 9 3 9 , Denmark Directed by Christensen for Nordisk Film. B ased on a novel by Alb a Schwartz.
THE CHILD
(Barnet - Denmark) , 1 940, Denmark Directed and co-written by Christensen for Nordisk Film. B ased on a play by Leek Fischer.
COME HOME WITH ME
(Gd med mig hjem - D enmark) , 1 9 4 1 , D enmark Directed by Christensen for Nordisk Film
THE LADY WITH THE LIGHT
(COLOURED) GLOVES
(Damen med de lyse handsker -
Denmark) , 1 942, Denmark
Written and directed by Christensen for Nordisk Film.
�ue to the fact that The Witch has been re-issued in a variety of forms over N the years, the crew credits include some entries that are specific to only one specific version of the fllm. Such entries are indicated by the use of italics .
CAST
Benjamin Christensen (The Devil / The Fashionable Doctor) , Ella La Cour
(Karna, the Witch) , Emm.y Schl}nfeld
(Karna's Collaborator) , Kate Fabian
(Lovesick Maiden), Oscar Stribolt (The
Gluttonous Monk) , Wilhelmine
Henriksen (Apelone, a Poor Woman) , Elisabeth Christensen (Anna, B ookprinter's Wife's Mother) , Astrid Holm
(Anna, B ookprinter's Wife ) , Karen
Winther (Anna's Younger Sister) , Maren Pedersen (Maria, the Seamstress I Maria, the Witch) , Johannes
Andersen (Pater Henrik, Chief
Inquisitor), Elith Pio (Johannes, the Young Inquisitor ) , Aage Hertel
(Inquisitor), lb Schj;jnberg (Inquisitor) , Holst Jl}rgensen (Peter Titta) , Herr
Westermann (Rasmus Bodell , Clara
Pontoppidan (Sister Cecilia, the Nun) , Elsa Vermehren (Self-torturing Nun) , Alice O ' Fredericks (Nun ) , Gerda
Madsen (Nun) , Karina Bell (Nun), Tara
Tej e (The Hysteric in Modern Sequence), Poul Reumert (Jeweller), H.C. Nielsen (Jeweller's Assistant) , Albrecht Schmidt (Psychiatrist) , Knud
Rassow (Anatomist) , Ellen Rassow
(Servant Girl), Frederik Christensen
(Commoner), Henry Seemann (Commoner) , Karen Caspersen (Woman) . Gudrun Barfoed (Woman) , Holger
Pedersen (Man) , Carlo Wieth (Man)
CREW
Written and Directed by: Benjamin
Christensen. Director of Photography: Johan Ankerstj erne. Art Director: Richard Louw. Assistant Art Directors : Helge Norei , L. Mathiesen. Editor:
Edla Hansen. S cript Girl : Alice
O ' Fredericks. Assistant Photography: Rudolf Frederiksen. Music : Launy
Grl}ndahl (prelude, 1 922 version) , Jacob Gade (main score, 1 922 version. Note: Some sources credit Christensen as Gade 's collaborator on the 1 922 score.) , Emil Reesen (1 941 version) , D aniel Humair (1 960s version) . Musicians (1 960s version) : Jean-Luc
Ponty (Violin), Bernard Lubat (Piano organ), Michel Portal (Flute) , Guy
P eders en (Double b ass ) , D aniel
Humair (Percussion) . Recorded at the
Studios Europasonor (Paris) . Editions Telecinedis . Narrator : William
B urroughs (English 1 9 60s version) , Philippe Noiret (French 1 9 60s version) . Assistants to the sound version: Norman Glas s , Paul Brewer.
Recorded at Newsreel and dubb ing services. Engl ish sound version produced by: Antony Balch.
�nbex
Abyss, The 11
Aladdin (play) 9
Allen, Grant 6 8 , 124
Among Jews 123
Ankersljerne, Johan 19, 26, 27, 30
Arctander, Ellen 9, 25
Art Zoyd 118
Atlantis 14 , 22
B.T. (newspaper) 48, 5 6 , 5 8 , 61, 87, 89
Balch, Antony 111, 114, 115, 117
Bang, Herman 67, 123
Barrymore, Lionel 72
Bartslgrer, Hans 105
Belt of Fate, The 11-13 , 122
Birth of a Nation, The 14
Blair Witch Project. The 118
Blind Justice 19-24, 64, 77, 82, 90, 93,
122
Blom, August 13, 14
Brandt, Mogens 31
Bro\vrurtg, Tod 5, 6, 76
Burroughs, William 111, 114, 115, 117,
118
Bush, Stephen 16
Butler, Ken 117
Capellani, Albert 12
Capra, Frank 95
Caruso, Enrico 9
Cat and the Canary, The 78
Chaney, Lon 6 , 74, 76
Chaplin, Charlie 106
Charcot, Jean-Martin 18
Child, The 93-95, 124
Children q[Divorce 93 , 124
Children of the Stage 122
Christiansen, V!ggo 6 3 , 100
Come Home with Me 94-95, 124
Conklin, Chester 78, 83
Corradi Sisters, The 122
Cortez, Ricardo 75, 76
Curtiz, Michael 77
Dagens Nyheter (newspaper) 64
Davis, Owen 124
Devil 's Circus, The 70-71, 124
1.2. c
Don Juan (opera) 7
Dreyer, Carl 21, 67, 110, 123
Ekstrabladet (newspaper) 104
Ernst, John 14, 20, 23 , 41, 7 6 , 108 , 111
Esper, Dwain 89
Faust 118
Faust (opera) 8
Finch, Flora 78
Fischer, Leek 94, 95 , 124
Foster, Stephen 84
Four Devils, The 11, 12, 15
Freaks 5, 6, 111
Gade, Jacob 47
Garbo, Greta 69
Gounod, Charles Franc;;ois 8
Griffith, D .W. 14, 58
Gr¢ndahl, Launy 47
Gunning, Wid 77, 78, 86, 124
Gysin, Brion 111
Harbou, Thea von 123
Harridans ofK¢ge, The (play) 105
Harvest Is in Danger, The 98
Haunted House, The 78, 79, 83, 124
Hawk's Nest, The 77, 83, 124
He Who Gets Slapped 69
Heft, Tage 33
Hertel, Aage 37, 39
Hls Mysterious Adventure 6 7 , 123
Hollywood (magazine) 82
Hollywood Destinies (boo/c) 23 , 89, 108 ,
109
Holm, Astrid 38
House q[ Horror 82-84, 124
Hubbard, Lucien 74, 124
Humair, Daniel 111
Hunchback of Notre Dame, The 76
Intolerance 14
Ipsen, B odil 9, 95
Kilian, Kay 114
K¢benhavn (newspaper) 61, 62
Korda, Alexander 92
Kramer, Heinrich 17
Lady with the Light-Coloured Gloves, The
107-109, 124
Lauritzen, Lau 40
Leni, Paul 78
LeRoy, Mervyn 77
Little Claus and Big Claus 12, 122
Los Angeles Record, The (newspaper) 77
Louw, Richard 28
Lunde, Arne 74
Magnusson, Charles 25, 26
Man Without a Face, The 18, 122
Marihuana: Weed with Roots in Hell 89
Mayer, Louis B. 69, 73
Mekas, Jonas 1 14, 115 , 117
Merritt, Abraham 7 9 , 124
Meyer, Johannes 95
Michael 67, 123
Michelet, Jules 1 7
miserables, Les 12, 47
Mockery 74-76, 124
Monty, Ib 80
Moving Picture World, The (magazine) 16
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 7
Mysterious Island, The 73-74, 124
Mysterious X, The 13-16 , 19-22, 24, 9 0 ,
1 0 7 , 1 0 8 , 122
Nanoo/c of the North 5
Nansen, B etty 9
Neiiendam, Nicolai 18
New Yorlc Times, The (newspaper) 66, 99
Niels Pind and His Boys 102
Nielsen, Asta 10, 13, 27, 1 1 0
Nielsen, Paul 62
Nissen, Helge 8
No�eratu 1 1 8
Nyrop , Jens Larsen 7
O'Fredericks, Alice 39
Olsen, Ole 26
O'Neill, Eugene 95
Osborne, Thomas Matt 23
Parajanov, Sergei 114
Pedersen, Maren 30, 31, 33, 34, 40, 5 2 ,
59, 8 2
Phantom qf the Opera, The 76
Pickford, Mary 24
Pio, Elith 37
Politilcen (newspaper) 61, 96
Polito, Sol 77, 78
Pommer, Erich 66, 67
Pontoppidan, Clara 36 , 101
Panty, Jean-Luc 111
Psilander, Valdemar 27
Rais, Gilles de 105
Rapf, Harry 69, 72
Reesen, Emil 97
Reeves , Michael 1 1 2
Refn, Peter 114
Ren-Lay, Judith 117
Reumert, Poul 101
Rindom, Svend 11
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 87
Rosenbaum, Carl 11- 1 3
Sandberg, Karen 15 , 2 2
Schmidt, Albrecht 10 1
Sch!1lnberg, Ib 33, 4 0 , 1 01
Sch!1lnfeld, Emmy 38, 39
Schwartz, Alba 1 24
Seven Footprints to Satan 79-83, 8 7 , 124
Shearer, Norma 70, 7 1
Sieverts, William 105
Sills, Milton 77, 78, 84
Sjostrom, Victor 25 , 6 9
Smith, Albert 24
Social Demolcraten (newspaper) 5 8 , 99
sorciere, La (boo/c) 1 7
Spiro, Hermann 22
Sprenger, James 17
Stahl., Sigrid 6 9
Stiller, Mauritz 25, 6 9
Street of Sandalmakers (novel) 8 7
Stribolt, Oscar 101
Teje, Tara 101
Thalberg, lrving 71
Todd, Thelma 78
Tourneur, Maurice 73
Tybjerg, Casper 68
Unholy Three, The 76
Variety (magazine) 7 0 , SO Verne, Jules 73
Village Voice, The (newspaper) 1 14
Wieth, Carlo 10 1
Wild Horses 114
Winged 1 2 2
Winther, Kamma 1 0 9
Winther, Karen 40, 41
Witch Hammer. The (book) 1 7 , 40
Witchcraft and Superstition Through the
Times (book) 105
Witchfinder General 112
Woman Saint, The 24, 66, 123
Woman Who Did, The 68, 1 24
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